5 times WWE failed to 'CASH IN'

With the Money In The Bank PPV just a few days away, what better time to look at the times that Vince McMahon & the WWE failed to 'CASH IN'?  Thus below is a my list of 5 times WWE had the opportunity to do something great, but went another direction.   

#5 THE ROCKERS

At the end of the 80’s/beginning of the 90’s Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty were white hot, especially amongst the teenage demographic.  Their merch sales were sky high and they regularly got one of the biggest ‘pops’ of the night when their entrance music hit.  However even with all this success they never really got the push that their popularity deserved, and basically what I mean by this is they never got a run as champions, well officially anyway!

Although they (The Rockers) are not recognised by WWE as former tag team champions, that’s not entirely true.  Back in October 1990 they actually defeated The Hart Foundation for the titles but because one of the ropes broke during the match and it was such a messy situation the WWE decided not to air the footage, and although Michaels & Jannetty actually defended the titles against Power & Glory at a house show a few nights later, WWE swiftly gave the titles back to the Harts as if the change never even happened and it was never spoken of again on TV.  Seemingly WWE had a change of heart (rumoured to be due to backstage politicking by Hitman & Anvil) and The Rockers never got their day in the sun.  Thus we can only imagine what could have been…

Little over a year later Shawn threw Marty through The Barbershop window and the rest is history….. Shawn Michaels, went on to be one of the all time greats winning multiple championships over an illustrious career, whereas Marty Jannetty (despite a few short lived moments holding gold) never lived up to his potential and ‘the Marty Jannetty’ is a term used in wrestling to describe the least successful and or least talented member of a tag team….. poor Marty!

*Saying that I'm pretty sure Shawn Michael's & Vince McMahon are happy enough with how things worked out for them!

#4 FLAIR V STEAMBOAT '91

The Ric Flair V Ricky Steamboat trilogy of 1989 is regarded by many in the business as the greatest display of pro wrestling ever performed (yes, I know everyone is now jumping on the Okada V Omega bandwagon lately) but Flair/Steamboat 89 has been ‘Pro Wrestling 101’ for anyone learning the art of professional wrestling for almost 30 years now, and in 1991 WWE had the opportunity to do it all over again, but alas this wasn’t to be.

In September 1991 the Nature Boy signed with WWE.  At this time Ricky Steamboat was an active member of the WWE roster (albeit under the truly awful fire breathing ‘The Dragon’ gimmick) and to add to it, although Steamboat was performing on the lower/mid card, he was undefeated on TV. 

Thus, it’s safe to say it would have been an easy transition for WWE to give the former Intercontinental Champion a bit of a push and send him into program with Flair.  Instead Steamboat soon left the company after reportedly not wanting to ‘put over clean’ The Undertaker on an episode of Superstars in the run up to his title match with Hogan at Survivor Series.  As with Flair WWE instead chose to put him in a mediocre feud with Roddy Piper, however this wouldn’t be the last time WWE missed a great opportunity with Flair during his first WWE run, but we’ll get to that later…

#3 HAKU

In my opinion Haku aka Meng had the potential to be one of the greatest heels of all time.  Regarded by many of his peers as being the real life toughest & meanest SOB in the wrestling business.  He was highly respected & feared by pretty much everyone in the locker room.  Watch any shoot interview documenting WWE in the late 80’s early 90’s and you are guaranteed to find an unbelievable story about how legitimately tough and downright vicious Haku/Meng was.  These stories of his crazy antics in bar fights have since become stuff of internet legend!

In a nutshell, WWE had this legitimate tough guy, who the entire locker room were genuinely afraid of, but instead of capturing this lightening in a bottle, strapping a rocket to him and pushing him all the way to the top to go toe to toe with Hogan, WWE let Haku float around in the lower to mid card allowing him just a few moments of glory, the highlight being capturing tag team gold with Andre the Giant.  

Instead of Haku, a real life bad ass, we got Zeus… f*cking ZEUS (a character from possibly the worst wrestling movie ever made)!!! Oh what could have been Vince, what could have been!

#2 HOGAN V FLAIR (WRESTLEMANIA 8)

We all now know that Hulk Hogan V Ric Flair never actually happened at Wrestlemania 8.  Flair actually lost his WWE title to Randy Savage & Hogan closed the show against Sid which had one of the most bizarre conclusions in Wrestlemania history with cameos from Papa Shango & the Ultimate Warrior.

Anyhow rumour has it that the original plan was for Hulk to take on The Nature Boy for the championship in the ultimate dream match of their generation.  However, rumours suggest that Hogan’s filming commitments for his TV show Thunder in Paradise conflicted with generating a satisfactory build up for one of the biggest matches of all time.  Other sources also suggest that both Hulk & Flair’s egos were so big that they couldn’t agree on a winner and Vince axed the plan, another is due to the steroid scandal WWE didn’t want to put the title back on Hogan at this time.  Only those involved know the real answer but my guess is somewhere in the middle, and in short the planned match of the century never happened at Wrestlemania 8.

It would be over 2 years before this dream match would happen on PPV & to add insult to injury it was actually on WWE's biggest rival’s (WCW) show at (Bash at the Beach 94).  Allowing Ted Turner & Eric Bischoff to reap the benefits of this historic feud, while WWE slumped through arguably its worst creative era in its history, the ‘New Generation’.

#1 WCW & THE INVASION

I know, I know… the Invasion PPV is the most bought non Wrestlemania PPV in WWE history and for the most part I really enjoyed it.  But lets be honest, the WCW stars Vince signed up were hardly the household names who helped beat WWE in the ratings for 84 weeks in a row.  I can only imagine how different the business would have been today if McMahon had gone all out and brought in the likes of Flair, Sting, Goldberg, Hogan, Savage, Nash etc.  I have always maintained WCW could still exist today under the WWE umbrella if Vince had brought some of these guys in as soon as he took control of WCW.

Also, there would have been no need for the WCW/ECW ‘Alliance’ as WCW had enough stars to stand alone, and the likes of Stone Cold wouldn’t have had to swap sides to even things up, nor would we have had to endure Nick Patrick V Earl Hebner (CHRIST!).  We could still have WCW PPV’s such as Starrcade, and kept the lineage of all their major championships!  Most importantly lets not forget that after WCW ‘died’ the lack of legitimate competition for WWE almost killed the wrestling business, which took a good few years to recover!

In short, the Invasion angle was far too short lived, lacked the star power it had the potential to produce and was essentially a waste of the greatest storyline in the history of professional wrestling!


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Credit: WWE.com (All photos unless specified)