10 Gimmicks WWE Cancelled For Being Too Successful
Getting over is a good thing, unless Vince McMahon doesn't want you to get over. From Rusev Day to Long Island Iced Z to Fandongoing, these are 10 WWE gimmicks cancelled for being too over.
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00:00I know, you've read the title and now you're sad. Don't worry, I'm sad too.
00:04Because when something in wrestling starts to get popular, it just lights a fire under everyone's
00:08ass. We all want to know where it's going to go and then poof, it's gone, it's dead, it's over.
00:13More fool us for caring. So do you want to relive some of these? Of course you do.
00:17So hello, I am Simon from WhatCulture, please do hit that subscribe button.
00:21And this is 10 gimmicks WWE cancelled for being too successful.
00:2610. Fandango
00:27I don't know whether WWE cancelled this one, but man, did they get it wrong in the aftermath.
00:32Before we do go on, let's do what we have to do and we shall do it together in 3, 2, 1…
00:40Sorry, I regret it.
00:41Point is, after WrestleMania 29 when Fandango incredibly defeated Chris Jericho,
00:46the crowd decided his theme music was awesome, so let's sing it all the time.
00:49I'm sure it started as a joke, but the flipping song went to the top of some music chart,
00:53so it all counts, and no matter where the popularity comes from,
00:56there are many ways to capitalise on it.
00:58Sadly, WWE thought the best way was to overproduce the hell out of this reaction,
01:02and turn it into almost a corporate folly,
01:05before remembering that Dango was meant to be a heel, so did whatever they could to re-establish
01:09that. It was so silly because the joy was right there, but no, we're not allowed to have fun.
01:13Go home and be miserable.
01:14The ballroom dancer never got back to these levels because you usually only ever get one
01:18shot at it, and who knows how nuts this could've gone. You can dismiss it, but we will never know.
01:239. Perry Saturn and Moppy
01:25This is always my go-to when people say wrestling needs to be less goofy in 2022,
01:30and that we should head back to the good old days of the Attitude Era where things were more serious.
01:34Okay, so let's discuss 2001, when Perry Saturn fell in love with a mop.
01:38Yep.
01:39This happened as punishment after Saturn had been way too stiff with an opponent in the ring,
01:43so somebody came up with the idea that he could be in a relationship with a cleaning utensil.
01:48It's so absurd, it was always going to work in some fashion.
01:50This is exactly what happened when fans started to make noise when Perry and his mop came to
01:54the ring. So what did we do? End the whole thing at Unforgiven that year where Saturn and Raven's
01:59feud came to an end. I think this would've been fine too if this was because we had something
02:03else for the former WCW man to do. I doubt he enjoyed being shacked up with a mop, but no,
02:08instead he did nothing before getting released. This whole thing was bizarre.
02:138. Damien Mizdow
02:14Now we're getting into the good stuff, because you can't argue this one.
02:18Not only did Damien Sandow achieve success once with his Intellectual Saviour gimmick that got
02:22fans to cheer him despite the fact he was an asshole, he did it again when he teamed up with
02:27The Miz. This was even more impressive because beforehand he had been given the Money in the
02:30Bank briefcase and lost it, which never used to happen, so no one was that bothered or fooled
02:35us. Why? Because Sandow became Mizdow and decided he would be a stunt double. That meant throwing
02:41to the ground any time The Miz took a fall, and so ridiculous it became the best thing on the show,
02:46Damien was oddly good at it. All we had to do was get to WrestleMania 31 at the
02:50Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Raw and have Mizdow throw out his mentor to finally be done
02:54with him, and while we did do that, seconds later the big show appeared behind him and eliminated
02:59him too. Like somebody popping your happy birthday balloon. Damien also lost to The Miz during the
03:04feud and after cutting a promo saying the stilly stuff was gone, started to pretend he was the
03:09macho man. That one was as bad as it sounded and honestly, what on earth were we doing?
03:137. The Jilted Lover Matt Hardy
03:16I know I say this a lot but I feel it's important. I would rather that no story or character was born
03:20out of the things we're about to talk about, and thankfully there is no beef between any of these
03:24folk and everything is good. But back in 2005, Matt Hardy found out his girlfriend Lita was
03:29cheating on him with best friend Edge and things went bad, because of course they did.
03:33Hardy made such a public fuss he got released, but after a swell of fan support was back on TV
03:38in just a few months with an awesome angle, he was breaking into events and causing havoc,
03:42it just worked so well. All we had to do was push him right and remind the crowd how much
03:46he had been screwed over, but we didn't. Instead, the Rated R Superstar ruined him in the feud,
03:51meaning the guy who lost his partner and buddy also got beaten up before he got moved to Smackdown,
03:56and we acted like none of this had happened. What?
03:596. Swing King Cesaro
04:01Do you remember when Paul Heyman was the manager of Cesaro? That did not go to plan. It all
04:06happened after the Swiss Superman had won the first ever Andre Battle Royal, which seemed like
04:10a good sign at the time, even more so when he and expected winner Big Show shook hands.
04:14Cesaro was always going to be a better babyface than Hill too, and it felt like we all knew that,
04:18because just as he was ready to simmer away, WWE decided to pair Cesaro with Heyman
04:23and told everyone to stop cheering. They also started to take away all of the moves the audience
04:27liked which left us with one question, if this is what the company wanted, why did he get the big
04:32WrestleMania push? We shall never know the answer, which is why I just want to forget about it,
04:37although I did just remind you, so what an idiot I am.
04:405. The B-Plus Player Daniel Bryan
04:43So there are some asterisks to this one, but Daniel Bryan even wrote about it in his book.
04:47In 2013, when he was becoming the most popular dude imaginable, WWE tried to stop this dead.
04:53Why Batista won the Royal Rumble in 2014, and why the Yes Man wasn't even in the match,
04:58we were trying to nip this in the bud. Unfortunately for the powers that be,
05:01fans weren't going to back down with this one, and with no other choice,
05:04WWE retroactively tried to fit a story around it. In short, Bryan was flagged as a B-Plus player,
05:09which was the real reason he was never able to make it to the main event, and for a while,
05:13they honestly thought this would keep him in the midcard. Nope.
05:16The lies here come because of course Daniel overcame all of this to absolutely smash it
05:20and win the world title, so it did work out, just don't let anybody tell you this was in the plans,
05:25because it wasn't. Thank goodness we did follow through though,
05:28it's still one of the best moments in recent memory.
05:30Before Long Island IZ Zack Ryder
05:33Zack Ryder was so ahead of his time with this, that if somebody wanted to do the same today,
05:37they couldn't. Taking advantage of YouTube, in 2011, Ryder realised he wasn't getting anything
05:42on TV, so why shouldn't he just make his own show? It was a wonderful mismatch of insider
05:46jokes and someone being a fan, and surprise surprise it did the numbers who knew being
05:51entertaining would work. It got so much steam, fans at shows started to shout his name,
05:55and a We Want Ryder chart even happened when The Rock was in the ring, think of that.
06:00There was a clear resistance to this at first before the popularity was acknowledged, and sure,
06:04Zack was the US Champion for a while. From then though, my word,
06:08the poor guy was treated like he'd slighted the company.
06:11Before Long his on-screen relationship with John Cena had resulted in Ryder being cheated
06:15on by girlfriend Eve Torres, and after we made sure he lost all the time,
06:19we moved on from this as fast as we could. It's still totally crazy, even more so when you see
06:23what Matt Cardona is doing today, I swear. 3. Rusev Day
06:28Right, I've been dreading this one, but we can get through it, together, alright.
06:32But yeah, I love Rusev, and I love Rusev Day so much, on one video years ago I stuck
06:37Rusev Day signs all over my body. I can't justify that, and it is odd, but I just believed in it,
06:42and this is how I chose to express myself. You'll be shocked to hear it didn't help.
06:46All the way back in 2017, it did feel like we had finally found the breakthrough idea for Rusev,
06:51as he teamed with Aiden English and Lana and told us every day was Rusev Day.
06:54It is ludicrous to say out loud, which made it even better,
06:57and as this was coming off a 10 second loss to Randy Orton at Summerslam, it got people talking.
07:01It was soon passed off as a fleeting thing, but when every single venue was chanting it,
07:05buying t-shirts and calendars, it was quite clear that this is the direction to head in,
07:09so what did we do? Burned it to death. Apparently happening after Vince McMahon
07:13told the future Miro that fans were only doing this as a joke, the group was broken up,
07:17and Rusev was put with Shinsuke Nakamura. To this day, I do not know why it was such a waste,
07:23and I still cry myself to sleep about it.
07:252. Bad News Barrett
07:26In 2013, Wade Barrett was turned into Bad News Barrett, and quite literally went around telling
07:32people bad news. You could only do this in wrestling, but because he committed to it,
07:36it began to work. Fans wanted to hear what awful thing he was going to break every single week.
07:41Instead of this being a lightbulb moment for someone backstage, however,
07:44Wade was pulled aside and basically told off for getting these reactions,
07:47as he was meant to be a bad guy. As the man himself has said, he had to knock it on the
07:52head after that because too many people were joining in, but that's the point of wrestling.
07:56What kind of message that sends to the rest of the locker room too I don't know,
07:59because it sounds like WWE would rather the crowd was bored by a heel rather than be entertained.
08:05To cut the whole gimmick short because of this too,
08:08it's no wonder Barrett left when he did. What else could he possibly do after this?
08:111. The Stooges
08:13Didn't see that one coming, did you? Well, sometimes it's good to have fun with these lists,
08:17especially when they've been so upsetting. There are loads you could pick from as well as it's
08:21happened a lot, but it's far funnier to talk about Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco as Vince
08:24McMahon's lackeys because they were awesome together. They looked like idiots constantly
08:28and were so willing to do whatever they were asked that fans started to love these two,
08:32which is why one day they started to feature less and less I Am Not Kidding.
08:36Brisco recently talked about this during his podcast, and hearing that broke my heart.
08:40The straw that broke the camel's back was when Vinnie Mack saw a bunch of sides in the crowd on
08:44Raw, and from the mid-2000s they became less of a thing. Don't try and make any sense of this either,
08:49there is none, just weird decisions by at times a very weird company,
08:53who knows why they do any of it when they're meant to be putting smiles on people's faces.
08:58Know any other gimmicks that WWE cancelled for being too successful? Make sure you let
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