10 Insane Details Wrestlers Put Into Gimmicks (And WWE Didn’t Care)

4. Shawn Stasiak Feuds With WWE's Top Stars...

Team WCW Mark Jindrak Shawn Stasiak Chuck Palumbo Sean O'Haire Shane McMahon Invasion
WWE.com

...and they don't even notice.

The Alliance was such a busted flush by the summer of 2001 that WWE were trying some bizarre stuff to salvage as many of the young stars as they could. Kanyon maximised his minutes as a token United States Champion, Steve Austin noticed Shane Helms' tattoo and transformed his career forever, and Shawn Stasiak took it to The Rock, Kurt Angle and others without them ever even noticing.

This was a genuinely inspired wrinkle from an otherwise flat spell - Stasiak would be the first to charge at a babyface, or accept an open challenge, or attempt a backstage ambush, and he'd be avoided and simultaneously ignored.

Wrestling's a strange game, and this somehow made him more recognisable than the slew of bodies getting fed to The Undertaker or Bradshaw or some other miserable c*nt that had worked themselves into a shoot about a wrestling war that was now no more. Like just about everything else from that depressing time, it may as well have not existed as soon as the Alliance had been finished off for good in November.

 
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Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett