10 Worst Anticlimaxes In WWE History

When Scott ‘Razor Ramon’ Hall and Kevin ‘Diesel’ Nash left the WWF in May 1996 to become the New World Order on WCW, Vince McMahon was not a happy man. Already narked that WCW was on the ratings offensive, using cunning tactics and dirty tricks to get out ahead of their rivals, he saw that Eric Bischoff was fully prepared to use Ted Turner’s bottomless chequebook to steal talent right out from under him.

McMahon would end up suing WCW over the issue, claiming that the two men were still playing variations of their Razor Ramon and Diesel characters on WCW television: characters that the WWF owned. To prove that it was the characters, not the performers, who were the important thing, in August McMahon began to hype the return of Razor Ramon and Diesel to Monday Night RAW. There was just one snag… he didn’t mean Hall and Nash, who by September 1996 had added a heel Hulk Hogan to the mix and were in the process of hacking themselves out a professional wrestling legend.

Incredibly McMahon had hired Glenn Jacobs and Rick Bognar to impersonate the two stars in the roles they’d taken on in the WWF. Introduced by a heel Jim Ross (and whose idea was that?!) after a build-up of weeks, the two men looked like bad cosplay versions of the original wrestlers who’d played the parts. Bognar was chubby and noticeably shorter than Hall, while Jacobs’ memorably pig-ugly mug could never be mistaken for Nash’s.

The angle was a disaster, so much so that for years afterwards the WWF would try to spin the whole thing as a ridiculous attempt at parody, mocking the mannerisms of the two men who’d upped sticks and left. Except those of us watching at the time knew that it was the real deal: a genuine effort to replace the two stars who’d abandoned the WWF for greener pastures, and one that stiffed faster than a foot fetishist shining shoes.