5 Real WWE Storyline Pitches That Were Rejected
2. Indy Stars Invade WWE At Daniel Bryan's Behest
Tasking the creative team to come up with jaw-dropping angles for the upcoming 'Raw 1,000' celebrations in July, 2012, WWE's power players eventually settled on CM Punk turning heel by attacking The Rock.
Eck's grand plan was to ape The Nexus story that had been prematurely sabotaged in 2010 by bringing up Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Kassius Ohno from developmental and casting the trio as a vicious gang intent on taking over the main roster; if this sounds familiar, that's because Triple H adapted the idea to include Roman Reigns and brought The Shield to WWE at Survivor Series 2012.
Before Reigns, it was Ohno who was in Eck's mind as the third man to join Ambrose and Rollins. None other than Tommy Dreamer would introduce the group on the historic edition of Raw and watch them rampage through a six-man tag-team match with ease.
The next week, this new faction would attack Dreamer and it would be revealed that Daniel Bryan (then a heel) was the one who had masterminded the whole ordeal.
WWE changed this so that CM Punk needed The Shield to protect his WWE Title reign, replaced Ohno with Reigns, dropped Dreamer from the equation and debuted the group several months after 'Raw 1,000'.