10 WWE Wrestlers Whose Patriotism Limited Their Potential
4. Vladimir Kozlov
I can virtually guarantee you that Vladmir Kozlov would have been a world champion in no time had he been around in the 1980s. He would have been the perfect adversary for the all-American hero Hulk Hogan, though the matches would have been deplorable. But hey, he would have been able to say he was a world champion!
When he debuted in 2008 on the SmackDown brand as the evil Russian, WWE figured it would elicit heat almost instantly. Instead, people just didn't care. They didn't care when he squashed jobbers week after week. They didn't care when he wore what looked like a diaper to the ring.
They certainly didn't care when he challenged Triple H for the WWE Championship at Survivor Series, easily one of the worst title matches in the last decade.
That said, with a background in Sambo, he was a legitimate fighter, but the way his character was portrayed early on limited him considerably. Because once he was finally beaten by Shawn Michaels, he had nothing to go off of, and he fell down the ladder quicker than when people fell asleep during his matches.
Admittedly, the pairing with Santino Marella was a guilty pleasure for some fans, but the fact he was taken off the WrestleMania XXVII card while his partner was in action spoke volumes as to how little WWE cared about him at that point.