Happy Accidents

[Jdulemba1001]

I didnt see a thread about this so here goes....we all have heard that the Undertaker streak at WM wasnt something that was planned when he debuted. It just sort of happened after a few years. Someone noticed Taker was undefeated and they ran with it. Now its a staple at WM. My question is this....what other "unplanned" things have you seen happen that you think worked out for the best? Is the streak the best accident ever?

I would say that the best accident, other than they streak is John Cenas rapper gimmick. He wasnt brought to WWE with that intention. He was overheard on a bus battling with another wrestler, and a gimmick was born. We all know how his career turned out. So, what say you? Whats the best accident in WWE history?

 

[origanaljerichoholic]

Not THE best but one of them was Cody Rhodes getting his nose broken by Rey Mysterio.
Cena winning money in the Bank so that jeicho didnt have to be the one that failed.
Mick Foley .... enough said.
When Cena tore his peck, Age Of Orton

But of all em , id say Shawn Michaels , taking 4 years off with the beleif his career was over. When he came back he came back for 8 years and performed faarrrr better and gave us some of the greatest matches.

 

[CTU-01]

How about Daniel Bryan's 18 second squash at WrestleMania and the overwhelming crowd response he got from that.

 

[shooter_mcgavin]

Basically the Attitude Era ... the entire inception of that era was a result of a lot of unplanned events.

- Austin's 3:16 promo at KOTR. It was supposed to launch Austin as a heel. It backfired and it made him the most popular Wrestler at the time
- Montreal Screw Job
- The early stages of DX. It was actually Bret Hart that helped coined the name of the stable and I believe Vince McMahon was furious at the promos Shawn Micheals and Triple H were doing as DX.

If you look at all these events they were never planned or what Vince McMahon had envisioned the WWF was going to take at the time. In his mind the future face going forward in 1996 were Ahmed Johnson, Shawn Michaels and The Ultimate Warrior. Little did he know that things were not going to go the way they planned and got us the AE.

Lesson here is that the WWE really needs to stop dictating the direction of the company (as they are doing know) rather let the trends allow where it's going. And I see that being the problem with the WWE right now. Hopefully they can take some queues with past successes.

 

[wrestler36]

'if you smell what the Rock is cooking' wasn't supposed to be a catchphrase that caught on, but it became standard in EVERYTHING the Rock did from then on. It was just something he said in passing to Gennifer Flowers before WM 14 to sound like a jackass, but it ended up sticking with him, from his promos to his entrance music

 

[Jerichoholic8894]

The character of Kane. When he debut who would have ever imagined he'd still be a big player in the WWE in 2013. Hell, I bet a lot of people thought that Kane would burn out (No pun intended) after the Taker feud.

 

[dxparza]

But of all em , id say Shawn Michaels , taking 4 years off with the beleif his career was over. When he came back he came back for 8 years and performed faarrrr better and gave us some of the greatest matches.

I gotta agree with this. at the time,i hated the fact the he was off for all that time. but when he returned in 2002 and had 'one more match' i couldn't have been happier. then the 8 years that followed were some of my favorite in all my years of watching wrestling.

 

[The Butcher]

I'd list the many missteps of World Championship Wrestling collectively as one. WCW had the money, the audience, the outlets, and it pissed them all away one by one. WWF/E could have easily been put out of business by WCW, only to end up owning them, and buying them for pennies on the dollar at that. Sure there was a lot of mismanagement on one side and a lot of savvy on the other, but companies don't crash and burn on purpose. WCW's fall was a happy accident for WWE.

 

[Wolf Pac]

- Austin's 3:16 promo at KOTR. It was supposed to launch Austin as a heel. It backfired and it made him the most popular Wrestler at the time

In that case, I'd also like to point out the Curtain Call incident. HHH was meant to win King Of The Ring that year and if he hadn't been involved then Stone Cold Steve Austin may never have taken off.

Another one for Stone Cold would be WCW firing him.

Eric Bischoff revealing the RAW results on Nitro. At first it worked in WCW's favor but in the end it backfired on them on Jan 4th 1999 and for the rest of their days as everyone switched over to RAW to watch Mick Foley win his first WWF Championship and they would never switch back again.

DX. They were meant to be a parody of the nWo, nothing more. Who knew they would end up being so popular and becoming their own group.

The 2004 episode of RAW just 2 weeks after Survivor Series where Chris Benoit was the General Manager of the show. Benoit booked himself in a Steel Cage match with Triple H for the World Title, and Triple H concocted a plan where it looked like Batista turned on Evolution and attacked Triple H, which "took him out" of the match with Benoit, and Edge ended up taking HHH's place in the match. After the Steel Cage match, HHH came out and called out Batista for a fight but then revealed it was all a ruse. I honestly don't believe it was planned for Batista to have his mega-push in 2005 and that WWE were gonna go with Orton vs. HHH for Wrestlemania 21, but that night the fans cheered Batista like crazy when they thought he left Evolution and even when it was revealed that it was all just a ruse, the fans continued cheering Batista from then on every week, which lead to WWE turning him babyface and having him face Triple H at WM 21 and beat him for the title.

 

[Pedigree1]

The birth of DX for one thing happened by accident. Back when Bret was not kayfabed upset i believe he called Shawn Michaels a Degenerate around WM12. That completely changed the landscape of pro wrestling and kicked off one of the biggest stables ever in history.

One other example that sticks out is When Dusty Rhodes told SCSA basically (sorry brother i dont have anything for you and frankly dont see anything in you)that launced SCSA career in the WWE. Yah the ringmaster gimmick sucked but we all know what happened at KOTR 1996 the shoot promo heard all over the world.

 

[bigbootydaddyV]

DDP getting thrown in the main event with the Macho Man was a pretty happy "accident" really was never supposed to get over like he did but he ended up being one of the top WCW stars there is

 

[FlairFan2003]

WWE listening to the crowd reactions Austin was getting and going with it, making him more of a likebale, anti authority bad !@# instead of a full fledged heel. Similar to the NWA making The Road Warriors fan favorites when they were clearlu concocted (and had been booked previoulsy) as Hell's Angel type biker gang heels. Sometimes something catches on you dont expect (or in these cases catches on in a way not expected) and you just ride the wave.

The creation of The Four Horsemen. Never intended as a steady group or gang, the at the time largely unrelated heels were booked in a squash match vs jobbers on TV, then during the post match interview, while discussing their own current, unrelated stories, Arn Anderson taunts the live crowd with "Neer before since the days of The Four Horsemen of The Apocolypse has so much carnage been wrecked by so few"...the following week when people in the TBS studio came in with Four Horsemen signs Jim Crockett and company began to suspect the caught something.

Ultimate Warrior getting fired. WWE was building a major Ric Flair-Warrior feud immediately after Flair regained the WWE Title from Randy Savage, in part based on the premise that Flair's interferrence in the Warrior-Savage SummerSlam match cost Warrior the title. The two were already main eventing house shows, cutting promos on each other, etc. It appeared as if they were headed for Survivor Series, where WWE would have given the belt back to Warrior. Plans bagan unraveling when Warrior's sloppy ring work directly lead to Flair suffering a major ear injury during a title match in Phoenix. The injury caused Flair severe issues with his ability to maintain a sense of balance, but initially the cause (broken bone chips floating in the fluids in the inner ear canal) was undiagnosed. Two things were certain, Flair needed time off for medical treatment and no one knew when (or if) he would be back. Conventional wisdom would have put the belt on Warrior at this point but UW was already having problems with Vince McMahon prior to injuring Flair. WWE made a bold decission, scrapping all main event plans for Warrior, put the belt in a "shocking upset" on Brett Hart, and Flair disappeared for over a month while being treated at The Mayo Clinic where they discovered the issue, making a full recovery. If Flair had not been injured, Warrior likely would have gotten the title, and WWE would have had nothing but trouble with the unreliable star. Hart gave WWE a fighting champion, popular fan favorite, and was one of the hardest working performers in the industry. Certainly for him this was a "happy accident" but I think it worked much better for WWE as well. People will say business declined with Hart on top of the card and there is some truth in that but can you imagine how awful WWE would have been with Warrior as champ during this time ? Certainly he wouldnt have wrestled as often (Hart was a workhorse, both in the US and overseas). Hart played a major role in the development of Shawn Michaels as well, something that might not have happened without the gravitas of being World Champion.

Goldberg: No one saw the phenom coming, his surprising crowd reactions to a fairly plane looking, muscle guy took all of wrestling by surprise. WCW was smart to ride this wave at least through 1998.

 

[xavyer]

I really don´t know if this was an accident or not, but in my opinion, another happy accident was the famous CM Punk promo a few day before his contract expired, i think that promo elevated him more than anyone expected, and it may have been the reason or a big part of the reason for his 400 plus days as WWE champion, and another happy accident may have been the Rock and Sock connection, i think that may have been intended as a fun couple of episodes of Raw and Smackdown, and they went as far as being WWE tag team champions.....

 

[Moneyinc]

The birth of DX for one thing happened by accident. Back when Bret was not kayfabed upset i believe he called Shawn Michaels a Degenerate around WM12. That completely changed the landscape of pro wrestling and kicked off one of the biggest stables ever in history.

One other example that sticks out is When Dusty Rhodes told SCSA basically (sorry brother i dont have anything for you and frankly dont see anything in you)that launced SCSA career in the WWE. Yah the ringmaster gimmick sucked but we all know what happened at KOTR 1996 the shoot promo heard all over the world.

Yea I was watching that Raw the other day. It was the Royal Rumble Raw in Toronto Skydome I believe. Either that or one of the other Raws in January. Bret definitely called HBK a degenerate. That would definitely constitute as one of the better accidents if HBK wouldn't have thought of the name without Bret coining it.

 

[tvcolosi]

Michael Cole referring to Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg Jesse James as some "type of New Aged Outlaws" after they stole the title belts on Raw in late 1997.

 

[Greek_God666]

Some I can think of were Stone Cold winning the King of The Ring in 1996. The original plan was for Triple H to win it, and he didn't because of the MSG incident. Had that not have happened, we never would have gotten the Austin 3:16 says I just kicked your A** speech.

Another I can think of is Ultimate Warrior getting fired after SummerSlam 1991. He was suppose to feud with Jake Roberts, and got fired, so they reinstated Randy Savage and had him in an entertaining feud with Jake Roberts

 

[Judah's Lion]

I didnt see a thread about this so here goes....we all have heard that the Undertaker streak at WM wasnt something that was planned when he debuted. It just sort of happened after a few years. Someone noticed Taker was undefeated and they ran with it. Now its a staple at WM. My question is this....what other "unplanned" things have you seen happen that you think worked out for the best?

Jdulemba, you dog! i was totally in the process of making a similar thread, which means nearly an exactly-the-same thread. i was gonna call it "the Howard the Duck Effect" based on this little bit of trivia...

"According to reports at the time of Howard the Duck's release, George Lucas was heavily in debt (having just built the $50-million Skywalker Ranch complex) and was counting on this film to get him back in the black. When it bombed, he was forced to start selling off assets to stay afloat. His friend Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer, offered to help by buying Lucasfilm's newly-launched CGI animation division for a price well above market value, and Lucas, in desperate straits and thankful for the assistance, agreed. That division eventually become Pixar Animation Studios."

so one of the worst movies ever made indirectly gave us one of the greatest movie-making entities in the history of cinema. or, as the title of this thread suggests, a happy accident.

as for my answer to this thread -- which i of course think is totally awesome, so kudos OP -- i've got two answers that are kinda connected.

1. Austin getting injured shortly after Mania 17. he turned heel, feuded with Benoit and Jericho, and then didn't do much for awhile inside the ring. he was hilarious outside the ring interacting with Vince McMahon and Kurt Angle. and during that time, "What?" became the most popular catchphrase in the WWE. i think Austin's heel turn was mostly a mistake, but the birth of that catchphrase alone made it a happy one.

2. Daniel Bryan's hideous Mania match last year. most would agree that Bryan deserved more than an 18 second squash. especially given what he's capable of. and the fact that it was for the WHC that he was wearing. maybe it would have been different if it lasted less than 8 seconds and thus broke the record set by Diesel/Bob Backlund and Kane/Chavo Guerrero, but it didn't even do that. just a terrible accident of an idea. but from that was born the mega reaction mega superstardom that became Daniel Byran's current time in WWE. and the most popular catchphrase since "What?" became the "Yes!/No!" variations chanted across arenas nationwide.

i'm not sure Taker's Streak at Mania is the happiest accident of all time, but it sure is one of the top three draws every year, so it may be the most consistently rewarding accidents of all time.

 

[Brothervis]

HBK being a Junkie allowing Undertaker to continue his streak was a happy accident. He was suppose to ref the Taker/HHH match at WM17 and have HHH go over in screwjob fashion that only the clique could do. The irony is HBK would be the Ref in that match but only 11 years later.

 

[Kidpolean]

Triple H calling himself the game...that was a huge turning point for his career

 

[Brewski]

I remember the Smackdown halloween party pretty vividly where John Cena, who at the time was a nobody, went as Vanilla Ice. He showed of some alright rapping that the crowd just ate. Vince liked the short bit and pushed that as his regular gimmick. That was what really started his launch to being the most popular wrestling star of the last decade.

Triple H calling himself the game...that was a huge turning point for his career

Does a really awesome promo really constitute an accident?

 

[Dirk]

The invention of the DDT. Apparently, Roberts was pacing backwards with his opponent in a headlock and then tripped. Today we have a whole variety of DDT's.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

Arn Anderson once blurted out in an interview something along the lines of

"The last time this much destruction was caused by so few, you would have to go back to the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse!"

The faction name was born. Sometimes the best things arent planned, they just happen and that is something that WWE need to look at. Letting the talent use their own creativity with the characters and promos could (and probably will) result in great things being created that the paid writers wouldnt have come up with- be it a cool new gimmick idea, a catchphrase or a promo that changes the course of a wrestlers career, or in the case of Steve Austin, the wrestling business as a whole

 

[HBsam31]

I read through these and my favorite would have to be Austin winning King of the Ring, and coing Austin 3:16. Had HHH won like he was supposed to things could have been very very duifferent. I would say this is the best happy accident.