10 Wrestlers WWE Pushed Way Over Their Heads
2. Lex Luger
He's often held up as one of the most overrated wrestlers of all time, but Lex Luger wasn't all that bad back in the day. Was he basic? Absolutely, but he was still more than capable of having a decent match against the right opponent, as his old bouts with Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat and Barry Windham attest.
The problem was that the WWF tried to push him as Hulk Hogan's replacement - a role he wasn't at all capable of playing. Big, muscular, blonde-haired superhero types were on the way out, and fans were pining for the elevation of smaller, more dynamic wrestlers like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. Luger was very much in the Hogan mould, but he lacked Hulk's electric charisma, and that's why he never became a franchise player.
The WWF saddled Lex with a textbook all-American gimmick, and he enjoyed a sizeable push throughout his run. Despite this, the WWF shelved multiple plans to make Lex champion, and he eventually became one of the first wrestlers to jump ship from WWE to WCW in September 1995. Luger has been on McMahon's personal blacklist ever since, and whether justifiable or not, his name remains synonymous with failure.