10 WCW Greats That WWE Didn't Know What To Do With
7. Dean Malenko
The Man of 1,000 Holds. The Iceman. Double Ho Seven. One of these things is not like the other. Why didn't WWE just call him Chilly McFreeze and be done with it? Dean Malenko came to WWE in early 2000 along with his Radicalz stablemates Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn and Eddie Guerrero. They were treated as high-profile defectors who left WCW and took WWE by storm. Malenko captured the Light Heavyweight title, but that is about it for him. Deano Machino was never going to be a major star in WWE, but as Chris Jericho proved in WCW, Malenko's no-nonsense persona could have been played as a perfect foil to the types of characters that dominated WWE in 2000-01. He would've been a solid midcarder or tag-team partner. Instead, we got a cheap James Bond rip-off who tried to date Lita.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
