Did WWE Purposefully Bury Former WCW Stars?

DDP certainly wasn't done any favours when he was given an off-kilter stalker gimmick and then totally pummelled by The Undertaker in their unbelievably one-sided feud. That Dallas was pinned by The Undertaker's then-wife, Sara, on an episode of Raw tells you all you need to know about how the former WCW World Heavyweight Champion was viewed in New York.

Following that he was given a cheesy motivational speaker gimmick and demoted to battling people like The Hurricane and Al Snow over the European Championship. Page was in his mid-40s at the time and, although he was a star for WCW, a lot of people felt that was down to his close friendship with Eric Bischoff as much as it was his strong work ethic. He had no such supporter in Vince McMahon.

Booker T was one of the only people to come out of the Invasion (on the Alliance side, at least) with any sort of credibility. He was treated like a big deal and put into major PPV matches against The Rock and The Undertaker. A lot of this could have been down to the way in which he conducted himself backstage. He was a great talent and well-respected, sure, but he also acted like a rookie when he first came in and was respectful to everyone backstage and careful not to step on anyones toes.

Speaking to the Boston Herald in 2014, Book had this to say about the Invasion:

"The WCW guys were supposed to be buried. None of us were supposed to make it, but I'm the only guy who was willing to step up to the plate and go in there and survive. I went to WWE to prove something. I had to go through Steve Austin, the Undertaker, Edge, I had to go through all of those guys to prove myself. I didn't want to wake up at 50 years-old and wonder if I could have competed with those guys, I wanted to know in my own mind I was just as good."

That's the difference between a guy like him and a guy like Buff Bagwell, who managed to piss pretty much every from the boys in the back to the office staff due to his inflated ego and bad attitude. He was 'buried' because he deserved to be. Buff was promptly shown the door while Booker was pushed hard.

Those were basically WCW's three biggest stars. The rest of the Alliance was made up of ECW stars and lower card guys like Billy Kidman, Raven, Sean O'Haire and Hugh Morrus. It's hard to say that they were buried per say, because they were were not a major part of the show.

Were they resoundingly beaten by their WWF counterparts? Oh, absolutely, but they weren't beaten in thirty seconds, depantsed and then kicked in the Wahoo McDaniels, were they? That's a proper burial. No, they were just fodder for the WWF guys. You know, the real stars.

The WWF won the Invasion, naturally, and some WCW stars did get buried along the way. Mike Awesome, who could have been a big star if marketed and pushed correctly, was made into nothing when some backstage branded him with the dreaded 'he doesn't know how to work'.

That was pretty much it for The Fat Chick Thriller, who did absolutely nothing but jobs after that. The rest of those pesky invaders simply continued working for Vince, smoothly transitioning into full-on WWF Superstars (TM) or went to learn how to wrestle the 'WWF way' in the developmental territories. Most of them weren't big enough stars for WCW for Vince and WWE to care too much either way.

It was after the Invasion that people started to suspect that Vince might have not yet let go of his animosity for his old competition...

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