Ranking 20 WWE Debuts And Returns In 2019

18. Cain Velasquez

CM Punk, WWE Backstage
WWE

It’s hard to rank a wrestler who had just one televised match this year, but it’s safe to say that Cain Velasquez’s debut year was a disappointment.

Velasquez showed up to defend Rey Mysterio and his son Dominick (who is also Cain’s godson) in October, immediately haunting Brock Lesnar. Cain was the man who dethroned The Beast in UFC several years earlier, making for a natural feud. Velasquez jumped the line and immediately challenged Brock for his newly won WWE Championship at Crown Jewel…

…And promptly lost a 2-minute UFC-style brawl to Lesnar. So after all that buildup, Cain was just a challenger du jour who barely lasted long enough for people to settle back into their seats.

Velasquez could have a decent future in WWE, or he could vanish into the ether. But this was one debut that has not lived up to the hype.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.