10 Best WWE Rookie Years

Professional wrestling is famously hard.

Even just appearing on television at all (let alone for the WWE) is a rare opportunity afforded to just a fraction of those who eagerly sign up to their local wrestling school with wide-eyed hopes of one day closing WrestleMania.

Those who are lucky enough to reach the big time can reasonably expect a slow and steady climb up a steep path, laden with potential pitfalls left and right. You could suffer a career-stalling injury while attempting a high-flying move; your character could suddenly become egregiously offensive to a large section of the audience; or you could simply look at one of your superiors the wrong way and get fired for no apparent reason.

So when someone comes along and, within their first twelve months at the company, manages to shatter the glass ceiling, push aside the established main event order and perhaps even win a title or two along the way, you can be pretty certain that they're cut from a special cloth.

Either that, or they've made friends with the right people.

OK, so technically this wasn't Glenn Jacobs' maiden year in WWE - he had already been on television in the mid-90s under the guises of Isaac Yankem and Fake Diesel - but it was at least the debut of Kane, the persona he finally settled on in 1997.

There are few better ways in which a wrestler can make his introduction than interrupting the first ever Hell in a Cell match to deliver a brutal Tombstone to The Undertaker. But the Big Red Machine wasn't done there: after settling the score with his estranged brother, Kane set his sights on the WWE Championship, which he won - less than nine months after his debut - in a First Blood match against Stone Cold at King of the Ring 1998.