10 Most Criminally Underrated Wrestlers In History

7. Kevin Nash

DOINK Matt Bourne
WWE.com

Kevin Nash, to some, was a limited and lumbering hoss well before an exaggerated number of quadriceps tears rendered him practically immobile. He was a tedious bridge between the era of Hulk Hogan and the era of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels - Vince McMahon's last gasp attempt to synergise size with money in the post-steroid landscape.

Only, he wasn't. When paired with smaller and more compact opponents, Nash as Diesel played the lurching, final boss giant role as well as anybody, but he wasn't quite as one-dimensional as his legacy sometimes obscures. His match with the Undertaker at WrestleMania XII was a frenetic and economic big man contest in which Nash did some considerable heavy lifting, and much of his early WCW (not the Oz stuff, naturally) work was probably better than it needed to be, given how over he was as a lynchpin of the New World Order.

He was a dismal failure of a main event experiment in the WWF, but his body of work betrayed how few cared to watch it.

Exhibit A: Nash was at his best at WWF In Your House: Good Friends, Better Enemies in April 1996. His match with Shawn Michaels was an ultra-violent war which, ironically, confirmed that Shawn's run as top babyface was doomed. If he didn't resonate with every portion of the WWF audience after that display of nerve and guile, he was never going to.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!