Every 'Next Big Thing' In Wrestling History: Where Are They Now?
18. Sid
Vince McMahon loved Sid.
Sid headlined WrestleMania VIII, at the expense of Hulk Hogan Vs. Ric Flair, in under a year of arriving. He was initially presented as a babyface before he went down with injury and Hogan Vs. Flair - which didn’t even sell out the first time - under-performed on the house show circuit. Surely, the idea was to strap up Sid at some point. He was huge, intense, and huge. He was a monstrous specimen with blonde hair, and Vince always went back to what he knew.
Sid, per Dave Meltzer, failed a drug test prior to WrestleMania, but it was agreed that he’d serve his suspension after the fact. This didn’t work for Sid, who instead fancied his chances at softball, which didn’t work out well for him.
The living proto-meme ventured between the WWF and WCW throughout the 1990s. There was an indefinable magic to the Sid character - who was awesomely bad - and both majors took the punt on him despite the fact that it never worked out for long and he was unhinged enough to take a pair of scissors to a fist fight.
He was really, really over in 1996 - just ahead of the time over - but even if he was ‘Sycho’ in 1998, he wouldn’t have lasted long. His main events were the pits and he was a mercurial nomad.
Ironically, the man who never stayed in the same landscape for long is actually in that business together with his two sons.