10 WWE Developmental Champions Who Came To Nothing

Not everyone gets to be Seth Rollins you know...

By John Bills /

A company as big as World Wrestling Entertainment needs its own developmental system, and during the new millennium, three promotions have been designated as such. Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) came first, with the working agreement between the two starting in 2000 and ending in 2007. Deep South Wrestling also acted as a developmental territory between 2005 and 2007. At this point the developmental system was moved to Florida Championship Wrestling, which became WWE developmental all the way up until the modern day NXT was founded.

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The superstars to come out of WWE developmental is a veritable who's who of modern professional wrestling; John Cena, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton, and more all came through this system, and even independent darlings such as CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Daniel Bryan started their WWE careers there. 

Both OVW and FCW were ran as promotions, with their own championships, and the list of men to hold both promotion's top titles is equally impressive. In fact, a large chunk of the current roster found themselves holding developmental gold at one point or another, and success at the developmental level was considered something of a harbinger of future successes to come. 

It hasn't always been a home-run however. A number of OVW, Deep South, and FCW Heavyweight Champions did a whole load of nothing on the main roster. Here are 10 who were particularly disappointing.

10. The Basham Brothers

A bit of a two-for-one to start with, and one that might not exactly be too kind as the Basham Brothers were actually two-time WWE Tag Team Champions and at one time were in a faction with then-WWE Champion John 'Bradshaw' Layfield. Given this list of accomplishments, it'd be easy to conclude the pair did alright for themselves.

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Well, yes, they did, but then this is without taking into account that Doug and Danny Basham were two of the biggest stars in Ohio Valley Wrestling for a time. Doug Basham was initially one of the top faces of the company, but turned heel in 2001 and became the #1 bad guy. Doug had four OVW Heavyweight Championship reigns, with his third reign was ended by none other than Batista.

Danny Basham also experienced a lot of success in OVW, also winning the top title on four occasions. Danny was known as Damaja, and one of his title wins actually came at the expense of Doug. The duo were a big deal in OVW, but ironically it would be their eventual teaming on the main roster that ruined them somewhat.

As the story goes, Doug Basham had long hair when he was OVW's top heel. Then, out of nowhere, he shows up at a taping completely bald. Jim Cornette, OVW booker at the time, understandably goes crazy, and supposedly Basham shaved his head at the request of John Laurinaitis, as WWE creative wanted to see how he would look bald ahead of teaming with Danny as 'twins'.

That was that for Doug Basham.

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