20 Most Underrated WWE Stars Of The Past 20 Years
16. Kanyon
Chris Kanyon’s career was cut short by a combination of crappy booking, badly timed injuries, mental illness and prejudice - but in his prime, he was one of the best and brightest pro wrestlers on the market, innovative and gifted.
Kanyon could work the mic as well as any main event talent on the WCW or WWF rosters back in the day, and his creativity and intelligence in the ring had him nicknamed ‘the Innovator Of Offence’ when he worked in Atlanta.
A trusted hand in and out of the ring, he was often given the responsibility of training the inexperienced celebrities and gimmick workers that WCW used to prop up their cards.
His own career, however, was in a state of near constant free fall. Through sheer talent, he managed to survive some of the godawful ideas thrown his way… like Mortis, a bizarre death-fixated masked man created in some bizarre attempt to shoehorn Mortal Kombat style gimmickry into the product, or the deeply offensive gay-bashing angle on WWE television in 2003.
As well as struggling with coming out in an environment that, at the time, wasn’t nearly so accepting of homosexuality in wrestling, Kanyon was also bipolar, a condition that often requires day to day management in order for the sufferer to lead a normal life.
Kanyon could easily have been one of the men to transition a WCW career into a WWF/E career, but two consecutive injuries kept him almost entirely out of action for a year, and any momentum he might have had was gone by the time he returned.
Released by the WWE in early 2004, Kanyon retired from wrestling in 2007, and tragically committed suicide in April 2010. Very few people in the WWF/E got to see the true skillset that Chris Kanyon had to offer. At his best, the man was an exceptional talent - one eventually wasted by the business.