10 WWE Wrestlers Vince McMahon Loved At First Sight
3. Johnny B Badd
When Marc Mero came to WWE in 1996, he p*ssed an awful lot of people off. Or, more specifically, his contract did.
Perhaps "Marc Mero & Sable" would make for a more accurate title here - various reports and anecdotal recollections of the first time Vince McMahon met Mero paint the picture of a meeting in which The Chairman had already seen stars in Rena before bothering his a*se to figure out what to do with Marc. He'd see that through and then some too, but his failure to find something stronger than 'Wildman' was because McMahon didn't really want that - he wanted Johnny B Badd.
WCW, in an attempt to compete with WWE years earlier had tried and failed to replicate the profit-making creations coming out of Vince's gimmick factory. In Badd, they'd created one that actually worked. Initially steering hard into the homophobic undercurrent of the fanbase, Badd's heel schtick was tweaked in line with his legitimately impressive in-ring to the point which the origins of the gimmick were barely visible three years later.
It earned him a guaranteed contract when such things were rare, along with a healthy dose of resentment from an undercard making much less. McMahon lost interest within a year of the deal, but pushed Sable to the moon as promised to recoup far more than he put in to the couple in the end.