6 Promising Wrestling Talents RUINED By Backstage Politics
Only those wrestlers who actually stood a chance.
Across social media and message boards, you’ll often find posts and threads discussing the same subject: which WWE wrestler would have made it to the main event, if bad booking and backstage politics did not destroy their career?
As you get older, you begin to realise that this is perhaps too simplistic an explanation. Vince McMahon was so profoundly inept that he nuked several careers, many of whom later proved him wrong. As an example, Dean Ambrose was a laughing stock in 2018 under Vince’s goofy, hateful creative, where from 2019 onwards, Jon Moxley became AEW’s top star and fulcrum. But did Vince truly ruin multiple generations of wrestlers who were rendered worthless before AEW afforded them the chance of reinvention?
Dolph Ziggler’s name often crops up in these threads, and he was the victim of office politics to an extent. Producer Arn Anderson raved about him, too often, to Vince McMahon. Vince resented the idea that he was doing something wrong and Ziggler, possibly as a result of this petty bickering, was forever doomed to midcard purgatory. Did he really have the stuff to make it, though?
A superb hand for his era, in which there is zero shame, Ziggler was ultimately too preoccupied with performing the most spectacular, praise-worthy bumps possible. In a way, you could argue that he perfected the art of getting his ass kicked, which is a very dumb method of trying to become a dominant main event wrestler.
Was Mr. Kennedy’s career really ruined by Randy Orton, who was very much right to be furious at his recklessness? Or was he a great catchphrase masquerading as a can’t-miss prospect in a barren period? Did Karrion Kross really get punished by the office for unapproved comments about the direction of his character, or was he simply incapable of getting over in front of live crowds?
What follows is an attempt to resist easy, sweeping narratives - a bid to really identify who could have achieved so much more, were it not for the murky sabotage of backstage wrestling politicians…
6. Paul London
There are different games to play in the political arena of professional wrestling.
A paranoid and defensive top guy might intentionally fail to jump when his opponent needs him to go up for a move. A promoter can spot this from a mile away, but who are they going to side with? A wrestler might offer advice, very publicly and loudly, knowing full well that they are making their opponents look like anxiety-riddled greenhorns in front of people of influence. A wrestler might disregard subtlety entirely, and outright tell the promoter who they think doesn’t deserve a spot. Another way to play the dirty game of getting ahead is to brown-nose the top guys. This, if you believe Bam Bam Bigelow, is how Triple H did it: Bigelow was the first to claim that he saw Triple H carry the Kliq’s bags.
During his infamous shoot interview with former friend and tag team partner, Brian Kendrick, Paul London told stories of the riding culture in WWE during the 2000s. It sounded nightmarish. In one tale, when riding with Chris Benoit and Jamie Noble, Benoit ordered London to stop a group of drunken men from harassing a waitress. When the waitress offered her gratitude, Benoit insisted that London “f*ck her”. London also expressed his disgust at the way in which his peers would suck up to the Undertaker out of pure fear for their spot. ‘Taker himself earned London’s scorn for making certain members of the women’s locker room burst into tears during the Wrestler’s Court process.
Wrestlers are a very different breed of people these days. It used to be that they’d be wild men and or sociopaths, carnies mostly in it for the money or the opportunity to live out their pathetic tough guy fantasies. Now, in a far more sanitised environment, the average wrestler either grew up watching WrestleMania or as a tape-trader, and wants to build a legacy of their own.
London was caught in the generation between; a guy who loved wrestling, but entered the business when it was still vile and toxic. London was never going to get pushed in WWE during that era on the basis of his size alone, but for a guy who was once so unbelievable as a hard-working, spirited babyface - his name really should get more of a mention among the first generation of Ring Of Honor legends - the fire went out when he was released by WWE in November 2008. He never made a real go of it after that. It was as if he was permanently spooked and grossed out by his experience in the big time.
On the subject of Bam Bam…