101 Shocking Wrestling Plans You Won't Believe Almost Happened
31. Space Corps Holly
Pictured: Hardcore Holly with Paul Heyman on ECW in 2006. Not pictured: Space Corps Holly and the pet monkey who'd jet off into outer space with him. Lord only knows what Hardcore and Heyman thought of Court Bauer's daydream. Right, Bauer gets a pass here, because it wasn't he who wanted space-inspired characters on extreme telly.
It was Sci-Fi.
The network thought it'd be cool if WWE's fresh take on Heyman's old product had some tie-ins with the kind of content found elsewhere on the channel. Throwing it out there and doing his best to come up with something suitable, Court pitched Holly working with NASA on a new project before mixing up his gimmick to suit.
There'd be a string of vignettes showing off Bob's space program training, and maybe even a heartfelt interaction or 6 with the monkey. Bonus points if they'd called it Sparky as a homage to Holly's old race car guise in the early-to-mid-90s. Calling it Thurman would've been stupid though. Who'd want to be called Thurman?
Stephanie McMahon and others heading up the creative team couldn't get behind Space Corps Holly. They thought it was a little too outlandish. Sure, because debuting 'The Zombie' on the first episode of ECW and having it take a caning from The Sandman was level-headed wrestling telly.
Holly's spaceman character was abandoned at source, and he continued playing the same bad tempered, no frills hard man he had for years. That didn't do much for Bob or for ECW, but fans tuning in for some retro flavour would've laughed hard at the Space Corps deal anyway.