10 Times WWE Picked The RIGHT Wrestler At The WRONG Time
"It ain't what you do, it's the when that you do it, that's what gets results!"
Being a booker is hard.
As well as relying on dozens of ego-driven wrestlers to co-operate with the myriad stories you're trying to tell, you need to choose not only who to push, but when to push them. Give a wrestler too much too soon, and the fans will view them as entitled upstarts. Push them too late, and the audience won't buy into them as champion material.
Naturally, there are exceptions to these rules (Goldberg was pushed to the moon straight away in WCW, and Kenta Kobashi became impossibly over by losing 63 matches in a row). But by and large, timing plays a crucial role in the trajectory of a wrestler's career - which makes it all the more unfortunate when the people in charge get it wrong.
To clarify, few of the wrestlers on this list could be considered out-and-out failures. Almost all of them are either Hall of Fame contenders, or have already made it there. But each one is united by the lingering sense that WWE could have done so much more with them, had they only pushed them at the right time.
Case in point...
10. Asuka
Asuka's WWE career has been, by any standards, extraordinary.
A five-time World champion, first ever Women's Royal Rumble Winner, Money in the Bank briefcase holder and possessor of the longest winning streak in wrestling history, Asuka will be remembered as one of WWE's greatest ever superstars.
So why does it feel like the company could have done even more with her?
When Asuka became the face of the women's division in 2020, it was a bittersweet moment. Yes, it was a just reward for the Empress' exemplary efforts in holding down the fort when the pandemic hit (Becky Lynch wasn't being hyperbolic when she called Asuka the best wrestler in the world when she relinquished the title to her), but it also felt like a case of too little, too late.
WWE should really have had Asuka dethrone Charlotte at WrestleMania 34. That loss sapped the two years of momentum Asuka had built up in NXT and on the main roster, and basically caused her to start over from scratch to claw her way back to the top of the card.
Aside from a painfully poor Smackdown title run, Asuka spent the next two years being the company's most over mid-carder before finally climbing back to the top of the mountain as RAW Women's Champion.
Which segues nicely to the women who beat her for the title...