10 WWE Announcements That Fell Flat

In case you missed the memes, Monday Night Raw this week saw the earth-shattering announcement that Jason Jordan is, in fact, Kurt Angle's long-lost son.

It was the culmination of weeks of patient build-up, in which the Olympic Gold Medalist was seen on the phone, in candid backstage segments (camera crew notwithstanding), speaking in hushed tones to a special someone on the other end of the line.

We were expecting something big - the WWE debut of TNA's Dixie Carter perhaps, or at least a reunion between Kurt and former flame Stephanie McMahon - and we got it, sort of. It's not like wrestlers go round revealing themselves as the parents of other wrestlers every week. This should have been big.

So why didn't it feel like it? The crowd on Monday greeted the announcement with what felt like a disarming mix of weariness and surprise, as though they had foreseen the inevitability that WWE would let us down - but in exactly which way was still unclear.

It's far from the first time that the audience hasn't played along, though.

So let's start with the elephant in the room.

Second only to a weird love affair with Dixie Carter, a long lost illegitimate son was one of the leading theories on Kurt Angle's covert backstage phone calls.

Its proponents, then, must have been delighted when the Olympian announced on Raw this week that, sure enough, he had fathered fellow professional wrestler Jason Jordan some 28 years ago.

If they were, they were pretty quiet about it. Angle's revelation was greeted with such a muted response from the crowd that those tuning into WWE for the first time could be forgiven for thinking that the Raw General Manager lays claim to estranged offspring every week. Perhaps it was merely the disappointment of realising that the writers had gone for something relatively safe (and, for those who were watching in 2007, a little passé too).

Was this really the secret that was going to destroy his career?