10 Wrestlers Too Big To Fail (That Failed Anyway)
4. Lex Luger (WWF, 1993-1995)
A decade before Vince McMahon made a hero out of Batista, he conspicuously failed to make a hero out of another former bodybuilder with a great look and a lack of in-ring skill.
Lex Luger had debuted for the WWF in January 1993 as a mid-level heel nicknamed ‘the Narcissist’, posing in front of a giant mirror to the jeers of everyone watching. Hulk Hogan’s decision to walk out on the WWF in June changed all that.
Hogan had been fighting over creative all year, refusing to accept Bret Hart as the company’s new top guy and convinced that he could barely appear on TV, phone in his performance and turn Hulkamania back on like flicking a switch.
It’s a typical McMahon move to prove Hogan wrong by picking another jacked blond guy and transforming him into his new all-American hero. That’s what he tried to do with Lex Luger, decking him in the stars n’ stripes, helicoptering him onto a US aircraft carrier on the 4th July to take out the Japanese menace Yokozuna and sending him on a road trip around America kissing babies.
Inexplicably, after all that subtlety-free build-up the WWF failed to capitalise: his big SummerSlam title match was a countout win, and Luger didn’t get the title. All of his heat left the room that night, and it never came back. After a series of lukewarm feuds over the next couple of years, Luger jumped ship to WCW without warning in 1995 and never looked back.