Active WWE wrestlers who were stars during the boom

[Victator]

Fans always bought Matt wrestling main eventers up to when he left. They would pop for his moves and buy his near falls. What other mid card act has that going for them?

[KrisZ]

Well Shane Helms & Brian Gewertz sharing a love for comics spawned the Hurricane gimmick which Helms loved.

[artDDP]

This thread has caused me to reflect on the WWF in 2000. At the time I wasn't quite 18 and I thought that while a lot of the match quality was just ok I was totally engrossed in the overall product. When I look back there are very few matches I actually want to go back to watch again. In fact, it's a very small handful. Outside of Rock and Hunter and a few midcard guys there weren't a lot of really great wrestlers on the roster back then but almost every gimmick was insanely over.

 

Also, slightly off-topic: Is there a good reason why the Hunter-Rock iron man match hasn't been released by WWE on any DVD set? Do they really think it wasn't as good as the "Pat Patterson special" from Backlash a month earlier?

[Loss]

They were in overdrive with the WWF logo being everywhere, so I wonder if they think it would look terrible with all the blurring.

[Loss]

WWE has a youth movement in place with no infrastructure to make it work, and the "push new guys" philosophy comes at the price of Hardy/Helms/Christian types who may not be the guys who can turn business around, but who would still be fresh faces on top that fans would accept because of familiarity.

I'm not sure I fully buy that argument. Take JBL's push in 2004, for example. They revamped his character, gave him the hard push and he cut some great promos, but it took him ages to be accepted by the fans as a guy who deserved to be in the mix on top, and even then he wasn't accepted to the level that fresher guys like Batista, Randy Orton and John Cena were. Matt Hardy's got that cult following that WWE should have capitalised on years ago, but that time has passed and he's now a broken down shell of his former self, both physically and mentally. The same applies to Shane Helms, except he's a guy I don't think the fans would have ever accepted as a serious headliner. I won't disagree with Christian, he deserves his shot and is someone Vince McMahon has a real blind spot about, but by and large I think WWE is wise to choose guys who aren't typecast as career midcarders and ground down by many years on the WWE treadmill to give their new main event pushes too.

 

I agree with this, I just think it would take less effort to get them over on top than it would to get someone completely new over on top. Orton, for example, was pushed hard from '03 on, but it was probably 2006 before the "Blandy Boreton" smarky-type backlash stopped and he was actually accepted by most fans.

 

-In 1985, Randy Savage matches pretty much consisted of nothing but him beggin off, running and bumping until he was able to bonk opponent with scroll (bonking opponent with scroll wasn’t transition to heel offense it was finish where either he’d win or loose by DQ). A year or more of this made him appear tough.

Part of Savage getting over as a strong heel was his psychotic act. He seemed scary because it seemed like he would do anything. But yes, I do sort of agree with that. He also had a top rope move at a time when most wrestlers in the company didn't.

[Matt D]

If Helms wasn't totally and utterly broken down in 09 he could have been over HUGE with the much younger audience. He could have been a merchandising machine second only to Rey. As it was, he was in slow motion and had that weird grim and gritty version of the costume.

[tomk]

How did we get to a point where almost everyone in WWE has been wrestling for less than 10 years? I know there are some guys who have been around for a long time, but I'm referring to guys that were at the very least midcarders on a national stage during the boom period.

 

I don't think you need to make the distinction of at least midcard.

 

Guys who were in developmental (for one company or other) during Nitro era who are currently employed as on air talent by WWE:

Daniel Bryan, R-Truth, and Joey Mathews.

 

My memory is Cena signed to OVW a round the same time as the WCW sale, Randy Orton showed up there about a month after it.

 

I used to talk about this a bunch at the height of Cena's 06-07 RAW run starting around the Federline matchup and the Booker and Court v Lashley, Gunner Scottt, etc. Smackdown run. Smackdown was the show built like traditional EMLL with rudo maestros leading green tecnicos, while RAW was Toryumon with a bunch of green rookies who had trained together and John Cena as face version of SUWA (the guy who could build a good main event match against anyone). I don't know if either show has that kind of identity anymore.