10 WWE Nightmares That Thankfully Never Came True

5. All The Gold

Ultimate Warrior Steve Austin WrestleMania XV
WWE

Commonly considered WWE's creative nadir and irrefutably the organisation's darkest day financially, 1995 is still overly maligned in company canon thanks largely to some wilful neglect of the state of the mainstream wrestling industry at the time. ECW was loudly trumpeted but by a minute minority, and WCW was a long way from truly kickstarting a second boom period with the New World Order. The former market leader remained trapped in a constant state of flux until the next move became apparent.

In that time, Vince McMahon continued to experiment, usually with increasingly detrimental effect. Never was that more apparent than at June's King of the Ring, when a partisan ECW crowd in the Philadelphia CoreStates Spectrum loudly jeered the crowning of Mabel and flooded the final match in particular with chants of the renegade group's initials.

It was very, very bad, but it could have been so much worse.

It was clear how high McMahon was on the Men on a Mission giant for a brief spell at least, and the real-life Nelson Frazier confirmed as much in a 2010 interview with Arda Ocal four years before his unfortunate passing. In reference to his WWE Title match against Diesel that headlined SummerSlam '95, he claimed, "actually Vince was leaning towards me (to win the WWE title) but if anyone knows about The Kliq they can change things around and that's what happened. The finish was changed."

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett