5 Real Reasons Why CAN'T MISS Wrestling Prospects Bombed

When it comes to Gable Steveson, the ratio of push-to-end product failure might be the biggest in company history, and think of the ground that covers. WWE has a reputation as a bad idea factory, but Steveson's story is one of familiar failure despite unfamiliar circumstances. 

WWE is the company that once spent hundreds of thousands of dollars they didn't really have going spare putting Lex Luger on a bus for a month in the hope that he'd get over to the same degree Hulk Hogan had been after nearly a decade on top. Steveson couldn't lace Luger's boots of course. Neither man started out as pro wrestlers but when has that ever had to be a hurdle? Luger's NFL career was once promising enough that he was almost a Packer rather than a grappler, noting that "had it worked out in Green Bay, I seriously doubt I would have become a pro wrestler". Even with that mindset, the manner in which he adapted to the fundamentals was proof positive that the game was always mentality first, everything else second. Professional sports will always be the playground of the mentality monster, particularly when it comes to solo pursuits and especially when it reaches Olympic level. On these terms, it was reasonable to expect the best from a Gable Steveson push.

WWE is the company that promoted Million Dollar Mania, one of the most obnoxious wastes of television time in an era full of strong contenders. The concept literally promised the giving away of cold hard cash in a desperate (and failed) quest for ratings. Its execution was disjointed at best and risible at worst, though it did at least keep performers and their trajectories out of the line of fire once in a while, and even delivered an ending that was supposed to be a cliffhanger. This was more McMahon family melodrama that swallowed up television time at the expense of promising wrestlers who desperately needed it, but by 2022, lessons had been learned. Having been included as a prospect in the 2021 Draft, Stephanie McMahon was tasked with introducing Steveson to the world on the grandest possible stage at WrestleMania 38 a few months later, and the company were careful and considered in the aftermath - a polar opposite to throwing money at a problem. He dropped fellow amateur standout Chad Gable with a suplex, then went back into the background so not to have his aura diminished by peaking too soon. On these terms, it was reasonable to expect the best from a Gable Steveson push.

WWE is the company that persevered with the Triple H "reign of terror", a push so destructive that it chased off a generation of fans that took a gamble on wrestling during the mainstream boom just a few short years earlier. 'The Game' had convinced his Father-In-Law that more of him was the only solution when it fact it was the biggest problem. A diminished company was oversaturated with a wrestler that only spoke of his greatness as opposed to being able to deliver it with any consistency. Over-exposure begat over-confidence, resulting not just in quantity being a problem but quality too. Contrast that to the extraordinarily patient roll-out for Steveson, who appeared fleetingly with the likes of Kurt Angle in a cute 2022 throwback to his "milk-o-mania" soaking of The Alliance, and in NXT where he advised wrestlers on how to beat his brother Robert (working at the time on the show as Damon Kemp). Was anything from the Gable Steveson WWE soft-launch as offensive as the time World Heavyweight Champion Triple H hopped aboard a mannequin and threw bolognaise at the camera while attempting to "screw its brains out"? Of course not, and on these terms, it was once again reasonable to expect the best from a Gable Steveson push.

Expectations rose, and rose and rose, and coincidentally, so did WWE's stock. The company was experiencing the most unlikely of creative rebirths during the exact point Steveson finally stepped into the spotlight...only for the former Olympian's obvious flaws to expedite his collapse, one familiar mistake at a time. 

Steveson didn't get a bus, but within the confines of NXT, he was held up as a Kurt Angle-in waiting, which was even worse. Steveson and Angle are the only two gold medal wrestlers to ever make serious goes of it in WWE, yet they are defined more by what separates them than the obvious bond. Angle dog-walked the majority of people to ever give wrestling a try; comparison to him was a curse rather than a blessing, particularly if the background was similar. Angle fought Brock Lesnar in front of a braying crowd of wrestlers backstage just to prove this point. Steveson might have been able to do the same, but credit on camera was far more important and he'd yet to establish any. 

Next, WWE threw money at the problem, upping his visibility on the show in an attempt to play catch-up on what was starting to feel out-of-nowhere like a loss. Having attempted patience, they jumped forward to panic. Steveson was a weekly television character, was being bounced in and out of programmes, being given sink-or-swim segments that flew in the face of the project up to that point. It was the summer of 2023, he'd not yet been in the system two years, and he hadn't even had his first match. The worst case scenario constantly felt like it was lurking around the corner and when it finally revealed itself, it bottom line'd the project as Steveson bottomed out. 

In a match as rotten as any of Triple H's biggest turkeys, Steveson's debut was an epic-scale Premium Live Event disaster against solid hand Baron Corbin at 2023's Great American Bash. Fans had seen through the turbo-push on television, but the contest with Corbin was abysmal enough to make liars and fools of everybody that had ever said anything nice about Steveson's potential. The pair raced through a Day One training school tackle/dropdown sequence and immediately into an ankle lock spot to try and generate a cheap pop. It drew boos. The audience were on to the con, and a con it was - the booking itself showed no belief in the hot new prospect, racing to a non-committal double count-out lacking the physical fire the story required.

In the end, the run was one big WWE doomscroll after all, all the way to a barely-talked-about release in early 2024, with a sum total of zero more televised matches after the Bash debacle.