10 Major WWE Rumors That Never Came To Pass

Nobody ever accused Vince McMahon and his cronies of having good taste.

Part of the reason that wrestling has never caught on as a mainstream form of entertainment is that people associate the sport with McMahon's sleazy vision, and know his reputation as a con-artist with the sense of humour of a racist 6-year-old.

Like attracts like, apparently. Back in the mid-2000s, WWE employed a wrestler named Heidenreich - another big man who couldn't work a bit, and whose only memorable moments were of the "Hey, do you remember that nonsense?" variety. He had a brief run - including a feud with The Undertaker - but fizzled out before long, He is little more than a trivia question's answer now.

Had WWE writer Dan Madigan had his way, though, Heidenreich's career would have been far more remarkable - and not for the better. Madigan pitched an idea, apparently inspired by Heidenreich's German ancestry and name, where the wrestler would debut as Baron von Bava, a literal nazi who was frozen in the 1940s and thawed out to become a wrestler, complete with swastikas and goose-stepping. The kicker: Paul Heyman, who is Jewish, would be his manager.

The idea died, but don't go complimenting WWE just yet. In 2004, the company signed Kenzo Suzuki (instead of his then-partner, Hiroshi Tanahashi, in an interesting fact), and he ended up having a similarly uninspired run as an anti-American heel. The original plan for Suzuki, though - one which got as far as a vignette on TV - was to take the name "Hirohito," the same name of the ruler of Imperial Japan during World War II, who led the country during a period when atrocious war crimes were being committed against Koreans and the Chinese. Hirohito was earmarked for a major push and a feud with World Heavyweight Champion Chris Benoit, but the character was dropped.