10 Times WWE Punished Success

10. Daniel Puder

Heck only knows what WWE were hoping to achieve here.

To anyone watching, Hardcore Holly, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero came across as bitter high-school bullies who begrudged a young rookie getting his first big opportunity. So, live on pay-per-view at the 2005 Royal Rumble, all three chopped the living p*ss out of Daniel Puder and left his chest looking like mincemeat.

This was blatantly a punishment for Puder's prior cheek. He'd made Kurt Angle look foolish during a shoot segment on SmackDown in November 2004, and thus he apparently deserved to be punished. There's just one big problem with that: WWE were silly enough to book some real sparring on the show, but they weren't willing to reward Puder for succeeding afterwards.

Once he'd humbled an Olympian on TV, his name was mud internally. Two months after making a mockery of Angle's challenge, Puder was unceremoniously thumped by three veterans on one of the biggest shows of the year. So much for showing he was Tough Enough.