A good debut is all about impact. If you come in and have a subpar match against a nobody, you have a pretty big hole to dig out from. But if you walk into the ring and stand toe-to-toe with a future Hall of Famer, then you are off to a good start. In 2006, Ric Flair was in the ring talking about his WrestleMania XXII performance in the Money in the Bank ladder match when a debuting Armando Alejandro Estrada interrupted him and told Nature Boy that his time had passed and that it was time to bring in some new blood. Flair took exception, but Estradas charge, Umaga, made short work of Flair, decimating him in about a minute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1qe0xDo92I Umaga was another repackaged star, being the former Jamal of 3 Minute Warning, but he was portrayed as a completely different character nearly three years after leaving WWE initially. The Samoan savage would go on a nine-month undefeated streak and participate in one of the biggest matches at WrestleMania XXIII, the Battle of the Billionaires, against Bobby Lashley. His time with WWE was short about three years but he made a pretty decent impact in his time, especially starting with his first appearance.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
