9. Paul Orndorff (WrestleMania 3)
This one comes with a slight injury disclaimer. By early-1987, "Mr. Wonderful" had concluded a big-money run with Hogan over the WWE Championship, during which Orndorff worked through a serious arm injury. The pain caused Orndorff to take on a considerably smaller schedule into the spring of '87, but he was working non-televised events fairly close to WrestleMania 3. He'd participated in a six-man tag in Omaha nine days before the pay-per-view. It's been reputed that Orndorff was the back-up plan to face Hogan if Andre were to back out of the main event due to injury concerns, or for other reasons. Obviously, that never came to pass, and Orndorff didn't work the big event. I dunno, couldn't he have had two minutes to squash Lanny Poffo or something?
Justin Henry
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Justin has been a wrestling fan since 1989, and has been writing about it since 2009. Since 2014, Justin has been a features writer and interviewer for Fighting Spirit Magazine. Justin also writes for History of Wrestling, and is a contributing author to James Dixon's Titan series.
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