10 WWE Champions Who Weren't Ready For The Belt
6. The Big Show
Even if the WWF had promoted The Big Show with real conviction, in 1999, he'd have failed miserably to replace the injured Stone Cold Steve Austin. The competition was too fierce, the new mass-brawling in-ring product too white-hot, to accept a lumbering giant in his stead.
The WWF hadn't promoted The Big Show with real conviction in 1999. The WWF had all but assassinated his onscreen character and offscreen attitude to a toxic extent. The WWF had brought in André The Giant's replacement, but discovered something closer to the 1990 vintage, and stigmatised him, literally, as an "overgrown 500 pound bag of monkey crap".
Overcompensating for this treatment with very manufactured character development in a new quasi-real landscape, creative killed off his father years after his real passing to heat up his dire midcard programme with the Big Boss Man. Dire in-ring but incredibly, perversely entertaining outside of it, this priceless midcard fodder emphatically failed to reach the seminal standards set by the nascent Attitude Era main event, and Show was swiftly removed from the title picture.
In the years that followed, Show, in patches, presented himself as the formidable giant McMahon spunked so much money at - but to underscore just how premature this all was, the guy was sent to developmental to learn the trade after reaching its pinnacle.