What if your first day on the job was your best day on the job? What if it was all downhill after that? These are 10 WWE Stars who peaked with their debut.
0:00 - Intro
0:30 - 10
0:53 - 9
1:59 - 8
3:13 - 7
4:08 - 6
5:16 - 5
6:14 - 4
6:56 - 3
7:58 - 2
9:06 - 1
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0:00 - Intro
0:30 - 10
0:53 - 9
1:59 - 8
3:13 - 7
4:08 - 6
5:16 - 5
6:14 - 4
6:56 - 3
7:58 - 2
9:06 - 1
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
Youtube Channel Comments Policy
We appreciate the comments and opinions our viewers provide. Do note that all comments are subject to YouTube auto-moderation and manual moderation review. We encourage opinions and discussion, but harassment, hate speech, bullying and other abusive posts will not be tolerated. Decisions on comment removal are made by the Community Manager. Please email us at support@wrestletalk.com with any questions or concerns.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 "Nearly 4 years ago I appeared on QuizzleMania as a replacement for Sam Shaw and it was my
00:05 first on-screen appearance for this company.
00:07 My debut if you will.
00:09 And that's right, I lost.
00:11 Thanks Luke."
00:12 Yes indeed, my debut was not my best day, but what about those in WWE for whom that
00:17 is the case?
00:18 What if you have your best day on your first day?
00:20 What if it was all downhill after that?
00:22 Well, that's exactly what happened to these poor unfortunate souls.
00:26 I'm Tempest Hailing from PartsFunknown and these are 10 WWE stars who peaked with their
00:30 debut.
00:31 #10 Ty Dillinger Two weeks in a row of putting Ty Dillinger
00:34 at #10 on a list.
00:36 "Nice."
00:37 WWE gave Ty Dillinger a Royal Rumble debut that was a perfect 10 and then as time went
00:42 on more and more was stripped away from who Dillinger was.
00:45 They changed his finish and did the unthinkable, took away his entire perfect 10 gimmick because…
00:51 well I'm still trying to figure out why.
00:54 #9 Curtis Axel
00:55 Back when Paul Heyman's clientele was limited to Brock Lesnar and CM Punk, the idea of making
01:00 a brand new star a Paul Heyman guy seemed like a surefire way to make a new main eventer.
01:05 And to be fair, at the start that was what Curtis Axel's trajectory appeared to be.
01:10 On paper, Heyman introducing a new guy, singing his praises, then having him wrestle Triple
01:14 H that same night in a match he doesn't lose sounds like an idiot-proof strategy,
01:19 but years of fandom will teach you that in WWE there is no such thing.
01:22 Axel's match with Triple H ended with the game unable to continue, although it never
01:26 really felt like Axel had beaten him to the point of referee stoppage.
01:29 It was set up to be the launching pad that sent Axel to the top tier of WWE stars, and
01:34 then the story became more about a power struggle within the McMahon family, and boy was that
01:38 ever what we wanted in 2013.
01:41 While it wasn't a perfect debut, pun intended, the months and ultimately years that followed
01:45 saw Axel slip down the card until he was a goofball comedy heel, either dressed as the
01:50 Axel Maniac, part of the B-Team, or doing whatever the hell this was in the social outcasts.
01:55 So unfortunately, the first night was as good as it got for the lad.
01:59 Number 8.
02:00 Gail Kim Gail Kim is a legendary pioneer of women's
02:03 wrestling in North America this century, and precisely 0.01 of that impact came in WWE.
02:09 Rather, it came in, well, impact.
02:12 Or more accurately, TNA, but then the joke wouldn't have been as good.
02:15 Anywho, Gail Kim made her WWE debut on the June 30th, 2003 episode of Raw, where she
02:21 competed in a seven-woman battle royal for the Women's Championship.
02:24 And it was a stacked battle royal, too.
02:26 Kim faced off against Trish Stratus, Ivory, Molly Holly, Victoria Jazz, and J Quillen,
02:32 and to come out on top against that competition, you would probably have to be pretty good.
02:36 Sure enough, Gail won by eliminating Victoria, capturing the Women's title in her very
02:40 first match to a huge reaction.
02:42 That's pretty good for your first night in the company, but for Gail, she wouldn't
02:46 reach those heights again in WWE, losing the title just 28 days later, and never holding
02:50 it again.
02:51 She floated around without much direction until her departure in 2004, but even after
02:55 she came back in 2009 after revolutionizing mainstream women's wrestling in America
03:00 with her series of matches with Awesome Kong and TNA, she could not even get a hint of
03:04 a push despite being one of the most talented wrestlers on the roster.
03:08 Honestly, eliminating herself seconds into that battle royal and then quitting?
03:12 Pretty reasonable.
03:13 7.
03:14 Baron Corbin This is where the waters become a bit muddied,
03:17 because do NXT debuts count?
03:19 Well, not for the purposes of this list.
03:21 Maybe we'll do an NXT stars who peaked with their debut list for all your Nakamuras and
03:25 EC3s of the world.
03:27 On today's WWE version of said list, however, we find Baron Corbin who made his first main
03:32 roster appearance at WrestleMania 32, winning the Andre the Giant Royal Battle Memorial
03:37 Battle Royal.
03:38 Now, Corbin has crafted a respectable resume for himself over the last 8 years, money in
03:42 the bank, king of the ring, US champion, but even through all of that, Corbin hasn't
03:47 felt like he has as much potential as he did on his first night with WWE's largest ever
03:52 crowd cheering for his debut win.
03:54 We know now that the battle royal itself holds little significance for those who win it,
03:58 but there was still a chance WWE could do something with the concept at the time.
04:02 They didn't, but we thought they could, and it was that enthusiasm that gave Corbin
04:07 a pretty darn good debut.
04:08 6.
04:09 Ember Moon For years, everyone looked forward to the
04:12 Raw after WrestleMania, speculating about who could be called up from NXT that year.
04:17 But as the years went by, and the Nevels and Enzo and Cassis of the world started to become
04:21 less and less frequent, it became more clear that the night after WrestleMania was probably
04:25 going to be the only time these call-ups would feel important.
04:28 Such was the case for poor old Ember Moon, who debuted on the main roster the night after
04:33 WrestleMania 34 in 2018.
04:35 Or if you want to get granular about it, the Royal Rumble 2018, where she competed as a
04:39 yet-to-be-called-up Rumble surprise, but either way the point stands.
04:43 After her debut, WWE had no interest in elevating Moon to the top tier of their women's talents.
04:49 She won some matches and would appear in your annual Money in the Bank and Royal Rumble
04:53 matches, but her only title match came at Summerslam 2019 in a cold feud with the then-smackdown
04:59 women's champion, Bayley.
05:00 A bad ankle injury later, and Moon was back in NXT, where she was equally as underused
05:05 before being released in 2021.
05:07 Frankly, WWE never knew what to do with Moon, and if you have been lucky enough to be watching
05:11 her incredible run in Ring of Honor, you know just how much she has always had to offer.
05:16 5.
05:17 Taz Now, I'm as big a fan of Taz as anyone, but
05:20 for entries like this, I like to defer to someone who lived through it, and really felt
05:24 the pain of seeing Taz's excellent debut against Kurt Angle at the 2000 Royal Rumble
05:29 squandered.
05:30 So here are some lovely quotes provided by our own Luke Owen.
05:34 Delegation Jones over here, but I digress.
05:37 They had it right there.
05:38 It's one of the most perfect debuts WWE ever did, and they had a fairly solid follow-up
05:43 to it as well, which was "beat some lower card guys, but then before you knew it, he
05:47 was feuding with them, and then before you knew it, he was one of them."
05:51 Just compare his Rumble debut in 2000 to his Rumble appearance in 2001, where he gets thrown
05:56 out of the match in precisely 10 seconds, not as a comedy spot, but rather as a "you're
06:00 getting in the way of the main eventers" kind of spot.
06:03 He spent the summer feuding with Jerry Lawler, and somehow the worst thing about that summer
06:06 feud is that it's also the debut of Raven, and he ends up tagging with Raven for no reason.
06:12 Oh Luke, always so on-brand.
06:15 Number 4.
06:16 Paige I mean, how many other debuts on this list
06:18 are big enough to serve as the climax to a major Hollywood film?
06:21 None of them, obviously.
06:22 Why did you have to think so hard?
06:24 Paige's main roster debut saw her dethrone the then-longest reigning Divas Champion AJ
06:28 Lee to a massive ovation on the Raw after WrestleMania 30, back when they meant something.
06:33 Which is about as good a first night on the job as you can get.
06:35 After that, it was unfortunately an uphill battle for Paige for much of the rest of her
06:40 WWE career.
06:41 She did win the Divas title a second time that summer, but between injuries, demons,
06:44 and horrible booking of the women's division that unfortunately only started to pick up
06:48 when Paige was out of the picture, Paige never felt like as big a star as when she did what
06:52 13 other women couldn't do just one night earlier.
06:56 Number 3.
06:57 The Nexus Now obviously, the likes of Daniel Bryan,
07:00 Wade Barrett, and to a lesser extent, Heath Slater went on to have successful WWE careers.
07:05 But as a collective, The Nexus is maybe the best example of WWE having a brilliant debut
07:10 and then using all that forward momentum to drive directly off a cliff.
07:14 Everyone remembers The Nexus.
07:15 They had a very basic t-shirt and a stupid catchphrase, but for one night when eight
07:19 rogue wrestlers tore apart the ring and left everyone in the vicinity for dead, you had
07:24 a new top storyline for the summer and eight potential main event stars.
07:28 Okay, maybe Michael Tarver was never going to make it, but you get the point.
07:32 And while things didn't quite go off the rails until SummerSlam, which at this point
07:35 has to be added to the list of wrestling topics that never need to make it onto a list again,
07:39 never did The Nexus have the aura that they did on that very first night.
07:42 I wonder what they could have lost after that first week.
07:45 Couldn't have been the best wrestler in the group.
07:47 WWE wouldn't be so foolish, would they?
07:50 They would.
07:51 And by removing Daniel Bryan, the group just had a little bit less sauce, you know what
07:54 I mean?
07:55 I mean, who else in the group was going to choke out Justin Roberts and spit in John
07:58 Cena's face?
07:59 2.
08:00 Ronda Rousey We have been a little bit lax with the term
08:02 debut on this list.
08:04 Debut appearances, debut match, whichever makes this easier.
08:07 Maybe that makes me a hack fraud, but I gotta make my job easier when I can.
08:10 In the case of Ronda Rousey, her debut match at WrestleMania 34 was by far the best thing
08:16 she ever did in WWE.
08:17 She did have pros like Kurt Angle and Triple H in the match with her to help things go
08:21 smoothly, but in her debut, Rousey showed a natural affinity for pro wrestling that
08:25 fans did not see coming.
08:27 She had all the poise, star power and technique of someone well beyond her experience and
08:32 ended up having the best match on what should have been a stacked WrestleMania as she and
08:36 Kurt beat the McMahon-Helmsley regime.
08:39 I am still absolutely someone who thinks Rousey's first year in WWE was a big success, but it
08:44 is also very clear that as time went on, the fans grew weary of Rousey's matches, promos
08:49 and attitude to the point that when Rousey returned and won the 2022 Royal Rumble match,
08:54 the decision was universally panned.
08:56 Normally, winning the women's title multiple times, main eventing WrestleMania and winning
09:00 a Royal Rumble match would be seen as the peak of someone's career, but Ronda Rousey's
09:04 WWE career would say otherwise.
09:06 And Number 1 - It's Sting
09:08 It's Sting!
09:11 Quick Hunter, let's beat him!
09:12 To many, Sting was the biggest American wrestling star to never appear in WWE before his shocking
09:18 arrival at the end of Survivor Series 2014.
09:21 A debut so shocking that it paralyzed Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler for nearly five
09:25 whole minutes.
09:26 Sting's WWE debut is one of the great Survivor Series debuts of which there have been a lot,
09:32 but really, let's extend that out because Sting's arrival is one of the best WWE debuts,
09:37 period.
09:38 Which made it all the more frustrating that rather than set Sting up with the kind of
09:41 farewell tour that AEW has been graciously providing the legend for the past three years,
09:46 WWE decided to use Sting's only WrestleMania match ever as a chance to get one over on
09:51 WCW one last time, as if the 14-year victory lap had not been enough.
09:56 Sting's loss at the hands of Triple H with JBL spitting anti-WCW rhetoric on commentary
10:01 was a piss poor follow-up to an all-timer of a debut and served to only justify Sting's
10:06 decision not to go to WWE in the 25 years prior.
10:10 But as is the case with everyone on this list, we'll always have Sting's debut.
10:14 And that just about wraps it up for me.
10:16 Before I go, make sure to like this video, subscribe, enable notifications to always
10:19 on and check out this clip from last week's list.