10 Dumbest Decisions By WWE Champions
6. Bob Backlund - Accepting A Last Minute Match Against Diesel
Bob Backlund's post-match promo after defeating Bret Hart at the 1994 Survivor Series is the sort of brilliance lost to overarching disinterest in the New Generation at large.
Veering between the psychopath he'd morphed into and the embittered old b*stard that had lurked beneath ("old" being an important trait for the persona - at 45, Backlund was about the age of half of WWE's regular full-timers today), the new WWE Champion raged about how he was "God" in the same breath as noting how he'd never even lost the title back in 1983.
It was becoming of his unlikely reascension that year, and neatly drew a line between his defeat to transitional heel champion The Iron Sheik back then and the one he'd become nearly a decade later. In real life, Backlund knew his run was to be terminated within a week, but in the story, he'd felt so drunk on confidence and control that he'd agree to take on late replacement challenger Diesel when Bret Hart had been too injured by the Crossface Chicken Wing to work a house show rematch.