10 WWE Ideas So Awful Even Legends Couldn't Get Them Over
"Creative has nothing for you..."
It was no accident when Paul Heyman specifically selected Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair as comparison points for AJ Styles following his magnificent match with Brock Lesnar at November 2017's Survivor Series.
Recording the piece for WWE.com backstage after the clash, 'The Beast's advocate was delivering an impassioned and glowing soliloquy on 'The Phenomenal One' as if he were holding court in a bar full of aspiring young wrestlers. Dusting off the David Koresh aesthetic of old, Heyman spoke with a reverence unseen since Barry Blaustein caught his iconic pre-Barely Legal address of the ECW locker room on his genre-defining opus Beyond The Mat.
Styles' latest success story had just concluded - Brock was coming off one of the most dispiriting performances of his career against Braun Strowman at No Mercy, but the WWE Champion had again saved the day just as he had to get into the match in the first place. The originally-planned Lesnar/Jinder Mahal literally didn't bear thinking about - the company canned it (and indeed, the entire Mahal experiment) two weeks before the pay-per-view.
Ironically, AJ was good enough to get 'The Modern Day Maharaja' sufficiently believable as a legitimate headliner in their title trade and subsequent pay-per-view rematch. It hasn't kept Jinder permanently lodged atop blue brand main events in the aftermath, but even a man of his faith probably wouldn't believe in a miracle that big.
10. Creepy Little B*stard
A compromise for Vince McMahon's completely irrational distaste of Christian's entire look, the forced 'Creepy Little B*stard' moniker was thrust upon 'Captain Charisma' in place of a face-obscuring blue dot the Chairman originally pitched. Then a well-established singles star on Monday Night Raw, the Attitude Era star was fortunately already over and knew how to stay so. It took particular testing of that mettle in 2003 when he had the period's ultimate icon calling him such a demeaning name in every other segment.
A foot soldier for some of the year's worst barrel-scraping concepts, Stone Cold Steve Austin was a useful storyline proponent for the company during a period of pained flux - earning cheers and jeers for any old sh*te the writing staff were pitching because he was 'The Rattlesnake', not because the ideas were any good.
The man once emerged on the stage with a pillow and duvet to denote how bored he was with Lance Storm, but nothing was attacked with such vigour as the 'CLB' nickname. Austin famously devised the 'What?' catchphrase leaving a rambling voicemail on Christian's phone. He wasn't able to bottle more lightning. Nor was the over-enthusiastic Jim Ross on commentary. And this wasn't his first missed swing of the year...