20 Most Underrated WWE Stars Of The Past 20 Years

The WWE superstars that flew under the radar… and had their wings clipped.

The Miz
WWE.com

For a long time, the fortunes of pro wrestlers in the US and Canada have been tied to New York. If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. You had a shot at the big time - the kind of payouts that, if you were dealt the right cards and played them well, could set you for life.

Well, in the past twenty years scores of wrestlers have passed through the halls of Titan Towers, but comparatively few of them have had long, critically acclaimed careers, or even moved beyond the lower midcard. Vince McMahon has his own idiosyncratic criteria for who gets to break the glass ceiling, and talent isn't always at the top of the list.

To be underrated means to be overlooked, passed over in favour of others. That can often change with time and context: for example, Cody Rhodes was one such performer, until he dramatically quit the WWE earlier this year to hammer out his own legacy in wrestling, and came to the forefront of people’s attention. Christian was considered underrated for years until he returned to the WWE in 2009 and began winning world titles.

Wrestling fanatics like to think we can sift and sort the diamonds from the silt. These, then, are the could have been stars, the should have been stars, the best yet most underrated performers (in my view, naturally) of the past two decades of WWF/E programming. Feel free to add your own in the comments if (when) you disagree...

20. D'Lo Brown

The Miz
WWE.com

Unfairly remembered as the guy in the chest protector who looked like Cuba Gooding Jr.’s hefty kid brother, Accie ‘D’Lo Brown’ Connor was a solid midcarder throughout the Attitude Era. He held the Intercontinental title once and the European Championship four times: at one point, while feuding with Jeff Jarrett in summer 1999, he held both titles simultaneously.

The size of a heavyweight with the moveset of a cruiserweight, Brown was a smart and savvy performer, smooth on the stick. When he strutted to the ring with that cocksure, hyper-exaggerated head bob, the ridiculously funky ‘Danger At The Door’ blaring out over the speakers, he stood out from the pack.

That pretty much sums up D’Lo: he was hip hop in an era of sludgy nu-metal. It felt like he was just getting somewhere in the company when the accident happened that changed his life… and that of Darren ‘Droz’ Drozdov, who was rendered a quadriplegic by a botched running powerbomb.

That night was October 5th 1999 at the Tuesday night Smackdown taping - the same night that Vince Russo and Ed Ferrera left the WWF. Rumours flew around that he was about to follow Russo and ditch the company for WCW. It took time for Brown to get his groove back: the way D’Lo tells it, by the time he did, that gossip was set in stone.

It wasn’t true, but that didn’t matter. There was a lot more to D’Lo Brown than the WWF/E ever showed us, but midcarders on their way out don’t get pushed anywhere but down, and D’Lo Brown ended up treading water for the next three years until his release.

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Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.