8 Talented Young Wrestlers Who Were Screwed By WCW's Demise

4. Chuck Palumbo

Chuck Palumbo had the natural look of a wrestler. He was 6'7" and 280 pounds while looking like a legitimate badass. He trained at WCW's Powerplant in 1999/2000 like so many others. By the spring of 2000 he was a regular on WCW TV that ended up winning the WCW Tag Titles four times. This was when WCW was falling apart and booking title changes way too often, which was part of the reason they died. Like a lot of young wrestlers in WCW (he was 30 years old at the time), he was picked up by WWE with the expectation that he was going to be a young star they could build around. His greatest success in WWE happened in 2002 as a team partner of Billy Gunn. They went on to with the Tag Titles twice, but were most known for acting like a gay couple. When they had their "commitment ceremony" in September 2002 they admitted that they weren't gay and it was all just a publicity stunt put on by their manager Rico. Once the team with Billy ended, he was saddled with a number of other gimmicks. He was part of the Full Bloodied Italians group, then he became a car aficionado and he was released by 2004. Two years later he was brought back as a motorcycle riding tough guy. That lasted for over a year although the gimmick really didn't get very far. Looking back at Palumbo's career, he did last on the WWE roster for nearly five years so it's not like he was a total failure post WCW. It's just that if WCW was still around he would have likely become a main event level performer because he had the talent to do it. It wasn't the same for him in WWE because their roster was better and he couldn't compete with some of the better overall performers that WWE had at the time.