10 Wrestlers Lumbered With Dead On Arrival Gimmicks

In September of 1996, the apparently disgruntled Jim Ross turned heel and threatened to bring back Razor Ramon and Diesel just months after they had jumped ship to WCW on the promise of considerably more, guaranteed money for fewer dates. They had become the hottest act of the decade in the meantime.

Any notion that the men who portrayed the characters, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, were actually returning was fanciful on a purely common sense basis, irrespective of their very real contractual status.

So, the WWF pushed journeyman Rick Bognar and green hoss Glenn Jacobs into those roles. This was the WWF as its ultra-defensive worst. That's generous. The whole farce was completely pathetic.

Nothing about this was good, insofar as the onscreen presentation. Jim Ross hadn't reached beloved uncle status just yet, but nobody could believe him in the heel role. And, of course, nobody could believe Jacobs and Bognor were the originals.

Hilariously, though, the fabulously inept WCW was so frightened by the WWF's insistence that Hall and Nash were returning that Turner worked themselves into awarding them fatter deals - even though the contracts they were already held to meant they could have sued them if they did.