10 Times WWE Didn’t Learn Their Lesson
Those who arrogantly deny history are doomed to repeat it.
On this week's episode of RAW, full-time star Rusev was marched out to the ring to assume a new role - glorified enhancement talent for Goldberg, part-time star of yesteryear.
One of WWE's best and main event prospects - Rusev is a vastly underrated all-rounder, with comedic chops as refined as his ultra-credible ring game - he was nonetheless sacrificed at the altar of the resurrected God.
It was dispiriting; even in this post-NXT era, wherein tantalising new prospects debut on a seemingly monthly basis, WWE still felt compelled to glorify the unrecoverable past. What's more galling - beyond even Goldberg's shaky performance - is that he was hardly a coveted signing. There was no great urge, no petition, from the fans. The entire exercise is an expensive advert for a video game.
This sort of thing is no longer a habit as much as it's an addiction. Recycling successful gimmicks and storylines is understandable. Welcome, even. But exhuming awful ideas, which already died on arrival, isn't merely the definition of lunacy. It is absolutely moronic...
10. The Underfaker
The Undertaker died at Royal Rumble 1994. Can a dead man die? This philosophical quandary wasn't the only head-scratcher - the resulting angle was so mystifyingly awful that it has circled back on itself to become a camp delight. That is, until you re-watch the match - it is deathly dull, appropriately enough.
Ted DiBiase found The Undertaker not long after his disappearance. He was alive! Or back to being dead. He had rematerialised, in any case. Except, he hadn't. This was DiBiase's attempt to cash in on the WWF's resident mortician. Paul Bearer disputed this new, much shorter Undertaker, and then located the real Undertaker, who vanquished the impostor during a match which has somehow shunted out Diesel Vs. Mabel as the worst main event in SummerSlam history.
The angle was terrible, even by 1994 standards - a critical and commercial bomb. So, WWE decided to repeat it in 2006. Only this time, it was his brother, Kane, who had to deal with an impostor. This doppelgänger (portrayed by the future Luke Gallows) had no discernible motivation; after terrorising the real Kane, and handily defeating him at Vengeance 2006, the real Kane simply threw the fraud out of the ring on the next night's RAW.
The booking wasn't just derivative, nonsensical and silly - it was 50/50!