10 WWE Stars Who Survived The Worst Booking Ever
4. Kane
At least Steve Austin didn't have to cosplay as someone else's gimmick.
Kane wasn't so fortunate. In 1996, he was cast as "Diesel" (the inverted commas are important) even though the real deal had vanished to WCW. Whilst Kevin Nash was smashing it as part of the ultra-cool nWo faction there, poor Glenn Jacobs had to play 'Big Daddy Fool' in the WWF.
Nobody bought it, and things were made even worse by Rick Bognar's attempt at playing Scott Hall's Razor Ramon character. Fans were outraged that the company thought they'd be so stupid to stomach wrestlers playing dress-up, and the resultant apathy for "Razor" and "Diesel" forced the WWF to abandon the project.
That could've been it for Jacobs. He'd already been a fake dentist and a fake Diesel, so there were no guarantees the WWF would have anything else in the pipeline for him. They did - he went on to play Kane, a character so popular it turned Jacobs into a legend.