It really doesn't matter if you think WCW gave Ron Simmons the World Title because of potential lawsuits and other issues over supposed racism in management or not. The fact of the matter is that Simmons was a midcarder one minute, and then the WCW Champion the next minute. With his name thrown into a "random drawing" for a shot at WCW Champion, Vader, after Jake "The Snake" Roberts injured Vader's original opponent, Sting, Simmons won and got his title match. He was over, no doubt, and he was never a bad in-ring performer, but he came out of nowhere. In today's WWE, it would be like R-Truth (totally coincidental, and has nothing to do with race) getting a WWE World Title shot against a beast like Brock Lesnar and then winning the belt, after weeks of beating people like Damien Sandow, Justin Gabriel, and David Otunga on random episodes of Raw. It would blow people away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB8DYpLAIfs The fact that it was a WCW Title match was bad enough, but that it was against one of the biggest and baddest men in all of wrestling only made this more shocking. Not that Simmons was a small man (6'2", 275 pounds), but he was certainly no Vader. It might not have been so bad if it was built to, but the "out of left field" nature of it all places it squarely on this list.
Columnist/Podcaster/Director at LordsOfPain.net for nearly seven years, with nearly 2000 total columns written. Interviewed and/or involved in interviewing the likes of Tyler Black/Seth Rollins (twice), Diamond Dallas Page, Jimmy Jacobs, Christopher Daniels, Uhaa Nation and more.
