The Funkasaurus.
Lord Tensai.
Mark Henry every 8 months.
The procession of “pushes gone wrong” will march on as long as the WWE is in business.
The following are not necessarily pushes that ended conspicuously, but it seems those are the ones we always focus on. Here are 8 of the biggest pushes in wrestling history, some with more permanent impact on the landscape of wrestling than others.
8. Ryback (2012)
When the Nexus arrived in the WWE in 2010 its number of members began to dwindle quickly. Despite a successful run, they lost quite a bit of firepower via injuries and terminations. Skip Sheffield was one of its original members, but had to step away due to injury, and was gone from WWE for many months.
When he returned on Smackdown in April of 2012, he was repackaged as Ryback, a play on his real name (Ryan Reeves). He squashed jobbers regularly and was clearly cast in the “unbeatable machine” mold. By September he was confronting WWE Champion CM Punk, and faced him at Hell in a Cell in October, with a 38 match undefeated streak on the line. His streak (and push) were halted that night, and he’s been on the decline (whether intentional or otherwise) ever since.
The list seems highly wwe-centric although the only WCW push that immediately comes to mind is the one you included
I immediately thought of Goldberg and I have also thought that Ryback has been a poor imitation of Goldberg since his repackage.
I’d like to the the “pushes gone wrong” list you teased in the intro!
Forgot how they pushed Sheamus to the moon out of ECW.
I thought this was a WWE article until number 1 … I expected to see Yokozuna at the top spot since he was pushed to kill Hulkamania
anyway
The Sting/Crow Push
The DDP Push
The Booker T push
all come to mind for me
The Hardy Solo Push as well
Good post