10 Wrestling Careers That Bombed After Their Biggest Match
5. Billy Gunn
Some people just aren't supposed to be in the main event. A career of tag team and midcard success will blind fans to the truth, but every generation is filled with wrestlers for whom the glass ceiling should have remained intact.
Billy Gunn was one such performer, and an argument can be made that winning the 1999 King of the Ring was the worst thing to happen to his career. After defeating X-Pac in the tournament finals, Mr. Ass found himself thrust into a spotlight that he wasn't quite good enough to enjoy. He was owned on the microphone, he was shown up in the ring. 1999 could have been a great year for Billy, but it turned out to be the beginning of the end.
Still, he'll always have the King of the Ring. Gunn defeated an impressive list of stars on his way to the crown, overcoming Viscera (okay, not so impressive), Ken Shamrock, Kane and X-Pac, earning himself a world title match in the process. A five-minute final should have been been a harbinger of things to come, although that was also sort of how wrestling was at the time. A three-minute loss to Bradshaw the next night on RAW, that was a real alarm ringer.
Gunn eventually got his world title match some three months down the line, before quietly moving back into tag team competition.