10 Wrestlers Cursed By Their Undefeated Streaks
"Wins and losses don't count."
Conrad Thompson's podcasts have changed the face of mainstream professional wrestling.
Longform conversations with Bruce Prichard resulted in Vince McMahon's former right hand man somehow returning to the position in 2019, over a decade after he was removed from the organisation. Eric Bischoff briefly made the same move after his own retrospective show returned his name to the conversation. Jim Ross may well have been next, had All Elite Wrestling not brought his voice back to live television with the inception of Dynamite.
Hugely influential figures in hugely influential roles, largely due to the success of their podcasts alongside Thompson. But for all of this massive change, was any contribution to the discourse as great as this one?
Bob Holly's quest for glory was a popper for the ages, but spoke to how easy a lot of wrestlers believed a monied career to be. All those long drives rebooking the territory almost certainly amounted to the ones in the conversation winning all the titles and going on streaks, but as this lot proved, it wasn't just as simple as the former Sparky Plugg would have had it. Even if his pitch in particular would have been worth the gamble...
10. Ryback
An over performer and objective pay-per-view draw thanks to a quality unbeaten run, renamed Nexus survivor Ryback was really on to something ahead of being named CM Punk's babyface challenger at Hell In A Cell 2012.
And that was the big problem for 'The Big Guy'.
A stand-in for John Cena after 'The Champ' went down injured, WWE decided to pull the trigger with their Ryback main event run because he was getting reactions to sustain it. It's just a shame the gun was pointed at the character's head.
Ryback had gone several months unbeaten, with the usual pathway of scrubs-to-Superstars resulting in his "Feed Me More" schtick getting some of the biggest arena reactions of the night. The Punk match was a step up from all of it, but Ryback had dominated and destroyed others similar to the 'Straight Edge Superstar'. This match shouldn't have been much bother for him, and wasn't, until dodgy referee Brad Maddox fast-counted the end of his undefeated streak and his best ever chance at becoming WWE Champion.
Best because it was virtually his last from this original run - outside of a failed TLC effort against Punk a few months later, Ryback repeatedly lost matches in the aftermath until the company felt it necessary to turn him heel. As John Cena's post-WrestleMania opponent, he was a heel hurdle and not a lot else - feeding time was over and the fans were full.