10 Wrestlers Whose Rookie Years Exceeded Expectations
Who managed to go above and beyond in their very first year in WWE?
Typically, rookie years aren’t the most successful of periods in a wrestler’s career. It’s often a time spent grafting away in the lower echelons of the card in a bid to win over both the fans and the powers that be within the company.
Even some of the most famous names in the business have suffered this kind of fate. Shawn Michaels spent years in a tag team that never won the big one before eventually breaking out on his own, Triple H was hardly a top-tier talent during his unabbreviated Hunter Hearts Helmsley days, and even the Rock was subject to chants of “die Rocky, die” when first starting out in WWE.
Of course, not everyone has had to follow that kind of blueprint. Some guys have managed to come into the company and establish themselves as something of a force rather sooner that you might have expected.
This article looks back at some of the more notable examples as we count down ten wrestlers whose rookie years went above and beyond our expectations.
10. Curtis Axel
We’ll kick things off with a slightly dubious entry, because when Curtis Axel re-debuted under his new gimmick in May of 2013, he already had a number of years under his belt from his stint as Michael McGillicutty.
Still, if we look at the resumé of the Axel character exclusively, on paper it certainly makes for impressive reading.
After making his debut on the 20th May, 2013 showing of Monday Night Raw, in his first month he picked a win over Chris Jericho, a pair of victories over John Cena, and another couple of successes against Triple H. Now, if we dig a little deeper, we’ll see that the Cena wins were via count-out and one of the Triple H victories was via DQ, but it still makes for a noteworthy list of scalps nonetheless.
In June, he then won the Intercontinental Championship at the Payback pay-per-view, and all the while he was flanked by Paul Heyman—quite the rub given the kind clientele Heyman usually associates himself with.
Admittedly, this was about as good as it got for Axel, but those first few months were still far more successful than anyone would have realistically expected.