12 Awesome Wrestling Gimmicks WWE Didn’t Know How To Handle
3. New World Order
It was virtually impossible to take WCW's best ever gimmick and slot it into the WWE product, not least when the main antagonist in the group was a fondly-missed performer with deep roots in the fabric of the organisation.
However, WWE's run with the group was particularly limp, with a mishandled introduction to the fold, and a tepid beatdown on Steve Austin failing to alleviate their credibility after a verbal lashing from The Rock earlier in the night.
Ostensibly a 'poison' injected by an insane Vince McMahon into his own product, Hogan, Hall and Nash opened the No Way Out pay-per-view by trying to present themselves as misunderstood, syphoning any logic immediately out of the angle.
The Hulk Hogan babyface turn was an inevitability also, with mammoth nostalgia reactions for 'The Hulkster' everywhere the faction went in the run-up to his monster match at WrestleMania 18.
With Version One of the 'lethal' group rendered moot, further incarnations mirrored WCW's own failings with the gimmick, as members were added and t-shirts adorned to magically get heels over or try and salvage the flailing brand.
Obnoxiously putting a bullet in the entire storyline after less than six months, McMahon himself disbanded the group during a Raw opening monologue, and the nWo was finally laid to rest.