Did WWE Purposefully Bury Former WCW Stars?

After weeks of getting the better of Triple H in pose-downs, benchpress and push-up contests and other weirdly homoerotic challenges, Steiner squared off one-on-one with The Game at the 2003 Royal Rumble. The match was, simply put, a disaster. It was obvious from the get-go that Big Poppa Pump was struggling physically and he was really badly blown up early into the match. At one point, he couldn't throw an overhead suplex without falling on his arse. Scott Steiner couldn't throw a damn suplex correctly - think about that for a second.

As far as Triple H, well he wasn't exactly 'that damn good' during this period of time and had picked up a lot of muscle-related injuries, which might have had something to do with him tacking on twenty extra pounds of mass that just wasn't needed. Steiner has gone on record as saying that he feels someone was out to get them as the match was scheduled to go for under twenty minutes but that they were out there for close to thirty and weren't getting the signal to 'take it home' from referee Earl Hebner.

The next month at No Way Out, Steiner and Triple H had another clunker and that all but convinced WWE management that Steiner was done as a top guy. Tips won the match and the feud, of course, and Steiner slid town the card, feuding/teaming with Test for what seemed like forever. Another major former WCW star, brought in for big money and then broken down into nothing.

After Steiner it was decided that The Cerebral Assassin's next opponent would be another former WCW standout - five-time WCW Champion Booker T.

One again, Triple H won the match and the feud in a decisivie fashion. But was Booker buried? Well, WWE certainly had the opportunity to make him a top guy at WrestleMania XIX but neglected to do so. Instead, they had Hunter pin him cleanly in the middle of the ring after weeks of himself, Ric Flair and gleefully anachronistic commentator Jerry Lawler referencing Booker T's criminal history (he served nienteen months for armed robbery in the late 80s) and ethnicity.

It was a burial, alright, but Booker was an established WWE star now, his relationship with WCW a distant memory in the minds of most. This had nothing to do with WCW and much more to do with internal company politics.

The same cannot be said for Goldberg, mind...

Click 'Next' for part 7...