12. The Ascension
How do the longest-reigning NXT Tag Team Champions fall flat on their face in a matter of weeks? WWE could teach a course on this. For weeks, vignettes built up the Ascension as a modern-day Road Warriors, cutting cheesy 80s-style promos with bad clichés about destroying their opponents. When they debuted, they decimated opponents in rapid fashion, but something was off. They beat up local talent much smaller, local talent for several weeks, without building up to bigger opponents. Thats fine when you consider that Ryback did the same thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECDCM3KPO6k But what killed the Ascensions, well, ascension, was the announcers fiercely burying the duo. Unlike with Ryback, where they fell over themselves to praise the Big Guys strength, Booker T and JBL in particular mocked the Ascension. Sure, they probably were going to have an uphill battle to translate their NXT success into victories at the WWE level, but to be buried weeks into their debut didnt help at all.
Scott Carlson
Contributor
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.
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