10 Wrestlers Who Went To Insane Lengths To Get Over (But Didn't)
When pushing a rock up a mountain goes as well as a push in WWE...
The path to stardom is often circuitous, painful, or otherwise requires a staggering level of effort.
Sami Zayn is one wrestler whose efforts are being rewarded. This is a man dedicated to looking like sh*t. He greases and parts his hair like his guardian has done it on his behalf ahead of school photo day. He has grown out his beard to make it seem like he is more concerned with the conspiracy undermining him than having a shave. He has willingly jumped balls-deep into a very silly and broad role, one involving ritual humiliation, because Vince McMahon finds it amusing.
As for insane lengths: by working with Johnny Knoxville to leak his shoot phone number, Zayn is willingly opening communications with wrestling fans to show ass.
Wrestling fans.
F*ck, imagine what they'll show him in return.
He knows how to get on TV, how to involve himself in a significant WrestleMania storyline, and he also knows that on the day he retires, everyone will remember their fondest El Generico moments and instantly rehab his image as an influential artist. Sami Zayn goes above and beyond, and got over.
What about those went to such efforts, but didn't...?
10. Jack Evans Shaves His Head For No Payoff
In a very WWE-like development, AEW wasted everybody's time in 2021.
Remember the Orange Cassidy Vs. Matt Hardy feud?
It was rubbish. Matt targeted Cassidy's hair, telegraphing a Hair Vs. Hair match blow-off to a trilogy nobody had asked for. The first match was somewhat fun, in that the Big Money versus slacker character dynamic was explored with amusing enough prop comedy, but Hardy got busted open when it fell apart and fell well short of the expected opening Dynamite banger. Teasing the sight gag punchline, Orange Cassidy, after being taunted by Hardy on a loose, monthly basis all summer long - AEW transplanted its great main event long-term storytelling where it did not belong - defeated Jack Evans in a Hair Vs. Hair match. Hardy then defeated Cassidy in a Lumberjack match, and then...nothing.
CHAOS and Best Friends "won" the programme by defeating the Butcher and the Blade, but Cassidy never did shave Hardy bald. Evans, who has barely been sighted since, cut off his hair for nothing. It was the rarest, most damning of things: AEW, normally an excellent promotion, should have ran the match that nobody even wanted, if only for poor Jack's sake. Evans has been through this before, in 2017, so he probably wasn't too bothered - but that's some plot hole.
In the biggest indictment, Jim Cornette was actually vindicated for his bad faith criticisms of the promotion.