5 Ups & 5 Downs From Big Cass' WWE Career
Seven Feet Under
The official WWE.com release of Big Cass without the the last vestiges of the John Laurinaitis talent 'development' era tacked on at the end steered most people to conclude that all was not well between the organisation and the seven-footer. Wishing talent "the best in their Future Endeavours" became the oft-parodied farewell they'd wish a performer just kicked to the curb, often due not to a fault of their own but the mere fact "creative had nothing for them" or some other such excuse.
The Florida Championship Wrestling developmental project William 'Colin Cassady' Morrissey entered way back in 2011 was one still yet to be transformed into the wildly popular (and substantially less perfunctory) NXT in the wake of Laurinaitis's low-maintenance low-success system. He later went on to note that a trainer (presumed by most to be the since-fired Bill DeMott) once told him "if he wasn't seven foot tall, he wouldn't even have a job" with the company. As it's transpired, even passing Vince McMahon's airport eye-pop test hasn't kept him on the gravy train.
Whilst speculation continues to mount on his less than fond farewell, it's perhaps worth poring over what might have gone wrong when certain other things went so, so right. Big Cass was far from a man without flaws, but like the Queens and New Jersey locales of Cass and his problematic pal, the big man's career was a tale of two cities...