One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY Month Of The WWE Attitude Era

16. January 2000 | The WWF Nearly Signed The WORST Wrestler Ever

Again: it’s quite sobering reading this stuff a quarter of a century later. Cast your mind back to January 2000. 

It was a ridiculously exciting time to be a WWF fan. The company was still red-hot. The shows were still very entertaining. While Steve Austin was out, Triple H, albeit driven in a side car by Mick Foley, arrived on the main event scene. And, in one of the most stunning developments of the day, the Radicalz jumped ship from WCW. This was massive. The WWF already had the biggest stars, the funniest catchphrases, the louder show. They had everything else but a great, action-packed midcard. Now, two months after debuting the prodigy Kurt Angle, they had Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn. Oh, and Chris Jericho was slowly finding his form. What a dream! The WWF was now going in a full workrate direction. Hell, Chris Benoit was probably going to win the belt and defend it in weekly hour-long Iron Man matches. That’s how technical sh*t’s gonna get now. 

Except, that’s not at all how Vince operated, and to underscore that, per the January 31 Observer, Ron Reis was set to receive a WWF tryout. Yes, that Ron Reis. The Yet-ay. The man who at Halloween Havoc 1995 did a more effective job of f*cking Hulk Hogan than Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam 2005. Vince wanted to take a look at the worst wrestler ever simply because he was massive. 

January was a wild month on the rumour mill generally; per the January 24 Observer, WWF officials held a meeting about whether or not to re-sign Kevin Nash, were he to become available. They decided that he wasn’t worth the hassle - at least until they killed the business and grew desperate not two years later.