10 WWE Developmental Champions Who Came To Nothing

8. Mike Kruel

Eric Escobar WWE
wikipedia.org

Familiar with Mike Kruel? How about Kid Kruel? Mike Mayo? Michael Washington Kruel? Well, it was under that final name that Kruel became the penultimate OVW Heavyweight Champion whilst the company was under the WWE umbrella. Kruel defeated Vladimir Kozlov for the strap, and would lose it to Matt Sydal (Evan Bourne).

Kruel made the move to FCW with the developmental system, but the bad-guy All-American was eventually released from his contract in 2009. Before signing with the company Kruel worked a number of dark matches for WWE, losing to JBL as well as coming up short in tag competition against Hardcore Holly and Charlie Haas.

Needless to say, he never topped the heights of defeating Vladimir Kozlov for the FCW Florida Heavyweight Championship.

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Mason Ryan FCW
 
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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.