Can't imagine a guy who feels worse right now about the state of big men in WWE than Vince McMahon. Ryback's kind of a bust, the less we say about how this Kane vs. Rollins feud has started, the better, Undertaker's comeback has been a box office draw, but probably shortening Mark Calaway's life, too. At the same time, there's like 20 guys who look like or were influenced by Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels -- two wrestlers largely featured as stopgap champions to defray blame aimed at WWE for employing steroid abusers during the early 90s -- who represent the best all-around performers in the company at-present. Vince McMahon's greatest gamble as a promoter wasn't Wrestlemania. Rather, it was his gamble that pro wrestling fans worldwide loved Superstar Billy Graham and Andre the Giant enough to support a wrestling promotion that largely pushed a series of physical carbon copies of both performers up ad down the card for roughly a decade. Intriguingly, it's in the athletic and fast-paced action he was forced to push when his gamble went bust that's likely to key to his company's future success. In being a "big man" meaning getting the support of a likely heartbroken and out of touch Vince McMahon, it's definitely not what's best for business anymore.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
