10 INSANE Risks WWE Took With Their Biggest Stars
2. Sunny
Though the internet was relatively primitive by today's standards, it did at least still exist in 1996, just as an FYI for all those incredibly weird folk that say things like "Imagine if Twitter had been around when False Equivalency Did A Thing!" to try and make a useless point about useless booking.
And while you couldn't condense a terrible thought into 280 characters back then, you could at very least engage slightly more with the things you loved due to websites and forums that were still finding themselves along with the brave new medium. And on this internet, Sunny was queen.
AOL's most downloaded celebrity of 1996, 'The Golden Haired Fox' was in demand when little else about WWE was, but Vince McMahon's attempt to transfer her obvious magnetism onto a listless tag division failed her and failed miserably.
Sunny started the year with The Bodydonnas before briefly alligning with The Godwinns as a way to set up one final pivot to The Smoking Gunns. Tag gold followed her as was her remit, but the only "Hulkdust" principle didn't work this time around. The teams weren't so much hot as burned by the glare of her superstar aura, and when it all came crumbling down eith the collapse of the Gunns in October, WWE didn't really have a Plan B.
By the end of the year, she'd surrendered her last managerial duties when Farooq left her employ to form the Nation Of Domination. Guest referee/ring announcer roles and a short stint with The Legion Of Doom was all she had to fill her time between then and her July 1998 release.