Career-Killing and Career-Making Losses

[DMJ]

On JR's podcast, he stated, pretty emphatically, that a loss in a wrestling match has never killed a career (in reference to the Lesnar/Goldberg match last Sunday). Now, I don't think he thought back through the annals of wrestling history before he made that statement, but it DID make me rack my brain...

 

Has any wrestlers career been "killed" by a major loss?

 

I feel like arguments can be made for somebody, I just can't think of who right now.

 

Conversely, there are an insane amount of guys who actually had their career MADE by a loss - Steve Austin at WM13, Mick Foley at KOTR 98, to a lesser degree Daniel Bryan when Sheamus squashed him and even Shane McMahon (whose win/loss record is probably shit, but was [and in some places still is] beloved for how bravely he's lost). Again, I know I'm missing a bunch, so, I thought I'd open up the convo here.

 

 

Name guys whose careers were killed by a loss (if you can) and/or name some guys whose careers were made by a loss. If you can do the former, you'll be proving good ol' JR wrong (and that's always fun)! Have at it!

[Log]

I don't know if you could say "killed" because he went on to still have a very successful career, but Lex Luger never winning the "big one" probably hurt his standing.

 

Maybe same for Sting.

 

To clarify, I mean in the 88-90 timeframe.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

Booket T losing to HHH at WM19 easily. All that build up with Booker cathcing on with the fans and telling his story of redemption and that damn racist acpect of the storyline, the hero had to prevail right? wrong. One pedigree and waiting a million years to cover him was pathetic. It took a good long while for Booker to gain any kind of traction in the future.

[Grimmas]

Ryback vs Punk. Killed any chance of Ryback as a star.

[Mrzfn]

It didn't kill him, but you could argue it took 18 years for Goldberg himself to fully recover from the way his streak ended.

[Migs]

I don't know if you could say "killed" because he went on to still have a very successful career, but Lex Luger never winning the "big one" probably hurt his standing.

 

Luger at Wrestle War '90 is probably the best example (he didn't actually lose at Capital Combat).

 

On the flip side, Tommy Dreamer was made by being valiant in defeat to Sandman and then Raven. If we're picking one specific loss, losing the Singapore Caning match to the Sandman would be the one.

[EricR]

Berlyn having having a long debut match against Jim Duggan pretty much killed that character right out of the gate, even though he won the match.

[Mrzfn]

Speaking of Duggan, Austin getting squashed by him pretty much killed his WCW career stone dead.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

As people have pointed out, saying a single loss "killed" someones career is quite extreme, but the ones that always spring to my mind are all the times that Jeff Jarrett should have lost the title in TNA. Most notable were Raven and Monty Brown, who were both really hot at different times and should've beaten Jarrett but lost in bullshit circumstances. Monty Brown in particular was never really as hot after that and I'm pretty sure ended up turning heel and joining Jarrett the next month (TNA everyone).

[fxnj]

Akiyama losing to Kobashi at the dome is commonly cited as killing any chance he had at becoming a top level draw and a terrible decision for the long term health of the promotion.

[flyonthewall2983]

Tatanka losing his undefeated streak to Ludvig Borga might have ruined his momentum into being a top babyface. He was out for awhile and didn't do anything of note until the feud with Lex Luger where he turned heel. Not sure if he could have gone further even if it hadn't ended that way, but I think that was the moment he was bound for mid-card status forever.

[stomperspc]

I imagine Jim Ross’ response to all of those examples would be that the losing wrestler was damaged but could have been rehabbed and/or was never going to be that big of a star to begin with. And that’s the thing, we don’t really know what the alternate universe where Ryback beats Punk (or is never put in that match to begin with) would have been like. We also don’t know what would have happened if WWE had reset sometime after that, threw their weight behind Ryback, and pushed him hard & effectively again. Maybe he ends up getting back to the level he was at or reaches even greater heights. I don’t think we can ever definitively state that a loss killed a wrestler’s career because we cannot compare it to a reality where the wrestler didn’t lose. It is all conjecture. Plus a lot of times that loss we point to is just the first in a series of poor booking decisions for a wrestler so it muddies up the whole thing.

 

On the flip side, guys have come back from losses that were not designed to get them over. Daniel Bryan is the most recent and maybe most obvious example. There’s some evidence to suggest wrestlers can bounce back from a poorly constructed loss or series of losses to get really over, which definitely fuels the idea some have that no one loss can break a wrestler.

 

I think that logically one loss could kill a wrestler’s career but it’s a difficult thing to pinpoint. The real danger in adopting a philosophy that losses cannot kill a career is that it becomes a sliding slope where you convince yourself that losses really don’t matter and that is definitely not true. That’s more or less where WWE is now (and has been for a while). If the defense of a decision to have a wrestler lose a match and lose in a certain way comes down to “eh, a single loss has never killed a career” then that’s probably the wrong decision to make. There should be a better reason than that to have a wrestler lose but in WWE, there often isn’t any better justification for their decisions.

[funkdoc]

i feel like individual losses are more likely to kill a territory than a wrestler's career. think of the Road Warriors screwjob at Starrcade, or JYD vs. Mr. Wrestling II.

 

the guys with undefeated streaks are probably the best examples for the thread topic. makes it so much tougher to recover when your whole identity is based around always winning. i'm also pleasantly surprised nobody mentioned Bigelow vs. LT - that gets brought up a lot, but the WCW fans sure bought Bam Bam as a threat to Goldberg years later!

 

i think there are many more cases where losing can kill a guy's career, rather than a single loss. Luger is perfect for this...you have the Maryland State Athletic Commission, Wrestle War '90, Summerslam '93 (not a loss but come on), and that cup of coffee with the belt in '97.

[DMJ]

Maybe the best one that sprung to my mind was...

 

Vader losing to Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam 96'. Now, Vader's losses to Hulk Hogan were one thing - but the WWE knew how to rehab a character and were more than halfway there with Vader, having had him destroy Gorilla Monsoon and, if IIRC, Yokozuna during the build. He also may have scored a pin on Shawn himself at an IYH? I don't remember all the details, but even if Vader wasn't quite as credible as he'd been a few years prior, to the WWE audience, he was a fresh monster and had considerable size and strength advantage over Michaels who was also a somewhat unpopular champion. They could have made him the WWE's biggest heel in forever by having him take the title. I attended SummerSlam 96' and I definitely wasn't the only 12 year old rooting for Vader (in my Undertaker sleeveless tee, natch). On the RTA ride home, I remember listening to a group of older fans (they were probably 22-23 but to me they were the most knowledgeable people I'd ever heard speak) talk about how Vader would win the title at "IYH: It's Time" instead. He didn't...and he also never really recovered from the loss, never again appearing as a legit title contender, even after he did score a win over The Undertaker at the following year's Rumble.

 

 

As for Booker T - I wasn't watching at the time so I don't know, but was he really that hot in 03'? I recently rewatched the 2002 PPVs and while Booker is over, he's kind of over in that half-comedy way with Goldust that makes me think, while he should've beaten HHH for storyline reasons, I'm not sure he actually "sunk" after WM19 because he was already kind of at that upper-midcard spot. Again, I could be way off.

 

Ryback - the loss to Punk hurt his career...but the loss to Mark Henry at the WrestleMania a few months later might've been the one that actually killed him. Why they had him lose that match (and then segue into a feud with Cena) was such a head-scratcher to me back then and still dumbfounds me today.

[BrianB]

A single loss?

 

Probably never. In terms of over a real lengthy span. When I read this topic title, Luger is a name that comes to mind but he got another chance in the WWF in 1993, though it didn't work partly because of him celebrating like he won the world series after a countout, but he still got a nice run in WCW in 1997 and was extremely over until they started jobbing him a lot after Hogan beat him at Road Wild.

 

The only names I've seen where maybe you can make arguments--Ryback and Tatanka--however, both of those guys weren't good. I also wonder if it was that Mark Henry loss and the heel turn vs. Cena did more damage than the Punk loss.

 

The Nash loss definitely didn't kill Goldberg (it probably hurt some, but again that fingerpoke of doom followup and Goldberg the inept goon was arguably worse.) Look at the latest historical observer that dropped, he was a massive ratings mover in 1999.

 

But losses can still do damage. It's usually more the followup that's the killer, honestly. Especially if the guy keeps losing. The only names I've seen where maybe you can make arguments--Ryback and Tatanka--both of those guys weren't good. I'd also agree that Mark Henry and the heel turn vs. Cena did more damage than the Punk loss.

 

Losses hurting a territory, though, I'd agree with that. Good examples listed earlier. If Punk had lost to Cena in 2011 at MITB, I'd imagine that would have hurt WWE in Chicago too.

[JerryvonKramer]

Additional reading from the archives: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/13259-the-significance-of-a-big-loss/

[Zoo Enthusiast]

Ryback vs Punk. Killed any chance of Ryback as a star.

This was the first one to pop into my mind when I saw the thread title. I remember being really bummed as a fan watching it.

[Tim Evans]

Might be too early to say but what about Cedric Alexander losing to Kota Ibushi as a career making loss? I mean it's one of the reasons he got signed in the first place.

[Brandon-E]

Does anyone think Christian dropping the World Heavyweight Title to Randy Orton on Smackdown two days after winning it at Extreme Rules qualifies as a career killing loss?

[Parties]

Even though they were “victims of their own success” in terms of being called up to WWE, recent luchadors have had pretty bad luck in recent years. Mistico hasn’t reclaimed his throne since his Sin Cara run. One could say that his doom began with his two-month undefeated streak ending unceremoniously in a TV match with Christian, two weeks before being abruptly taken out of MITB and served with a 30-day wellness violation. Del Rio obviously had an awful go at it his second time around, but you can’t really pin it on a match as much a bad 2016 in total. La Sombra losing his mask and coming to America has probably been a net negative to date.

 

The thing about “losing one match that in hindsight seems pivotal” is that it’s often more just the first public sign that the worker has fallen out of favor with the booker. Strummer’s example in the linked 2011 thread is a good one: Steamboat losing to Honky and never getting revenge seems weird now, but he was on the outs with Vince by that point anyway.

 

The right answer to this is probably Nash beating Goldberg, if only to serve as our daily reminder that Nash is an immense loser.

[Mrzfn]

Does anyone think Christian dropping the World Heavyweight Title to Randy Orton on Smackdown two days after winning it at Extreme Rules qualifies as a career killing loss?

 

WWE had invested so little in Christian as a main eventer anyway that I don't this his career really had a chance to be seen on that level by most fans. I guess you can make the case that he could have had a good main event career if they hadn't killed it, but it's hard to say for sure.

[Parties]

In hindsight, it’s weird that the three acts who were actively pushed in 2011 WWE were The Miz, R-Truth, and Michael Cole.

[El Dragon]

Jeff Jarrett beating Monty Brown felt like a massive missed opportunity.

[MikeCampbell]

DDP laying down for Undertaker's wife, Sara?

[C.S.]

Steve Williams losing to Bart Gunn in the Brawl for All.

 

Bart Gunn losing to Butterbean at WrestleMania.