Storylines With Potential....Then That Happened

[lenguy]

You know them, the storylines that started off promising and in the following weeks and months they built some steam and started to get interesting..until...that thing happens that completely ruins the entire angle for you.

Well thats the point of this thread. To take some of these storylines and discuss where the writing team went wrong. What made sense and what didn't, and how they could of saved it. So I'm going give you guys a few options here.

Option one: Take a storyline that had potential and had your interested but was ruined for you.

-Discuss why it was ruined for you, What happened that killed your interest in the particular storyline? Was it the right booking move? Why or why not. Lastly, what could have saved said storyline.

Option two: Take a storyline that you completely and utterly loathed. Just rip into it

-Discuss why you hated it so much. Could it have be salvaged and turned into something amazing if given the right booking? Why or why not

Option three: Take a shitty ass storyline that could have been gold but poor booking held it back

-Discuss why it was so terrible in the first place and then discuss how it could of been better if the booking was up to you. What would you do differently and what would you keep the same.

Finally option four: Discuss an angle that had a good storyline but the superstars involved just never mixed and had no chemistry in the storyline.

-Discuss why the superstars involved never worked well. Would the different superstars have been a better suit for the said storyline. Was there something else involved that never made sense in the storyline which caused it to fail. If you were to redo it. What would you do differently, would you involve the same superstars or different ones?

Pick one and discuss, hell feel free to do all four if you really want to. I'll start off with one.

Option two. The storyline being Vince Vince McMahon and hornswoggle illegitimate son angle. I thought this angle was so stupid and really served no purpose other than to try and boost ratings. I understand trying to get hornswoggle some T.V time as he was a child friendly character but the storyline had no substance and was all around completely uninteresting on all levels. From the moment of its inception all the way to the end. I think that in no way this storyline could have been salvaged and improved in anyway because it was just a terrible idea from the very beginning and really had no chance of being interesting. Hell I would have much preferred if it was HHH instead of the little bastard. I just flat out hated it.

Now I give the floor to you. To quote one Hamburglar

DISCUSS THIS SHIT (note to self...find my own catchphrase)

 

[spacephantomx]

funny enough this the first thing that came to mind was that story line. Orginally Mr. Kennedy was in store to be the illegitimate son and was going to fued with HHH up until he violated the health and wellness policy and had him suspended and gave the role to hornswoggle for some ungod unknown reason. This story line would have pushed Mr Kennedy to maintevent status.

 

[redeffect3]

A story that quickly pops into my head was Orton vs Edge this past year. It had Edge and the heel and Orton as the face. Due to injury it never really evolved. I felt it could have been a great fued with great matches. Also, Edge was traded to Smackdown. I truly feel Edge vs Orton could be a Wrestlemania worthy match so I really hope once one of them turns heel they have another fued. They are both good mic workers, good in ring wrestlers. I would expect a pretty good fued from them.


Also the story of Vince dying in the limo explosion. we all know due to the Benoit situation, it didnt go through as planned, It makes me wonder how it would have played off and if that were just the symbolism for the death of the character

 

[The 1-2-3 Killam]

Oh god...the McMahon-Hornswaggle was some of the worst garbage I have ever seen! They took an all-comedy character and built an entire angle around him involving high profile superstars and the chairman himself. And then they decided to allow McMahon to torture the poor fella... It was just trash...

Oh, and remember when Kofi Kingston got that badass push against Orton's super-heel character...and he was really over and pulling off awesome promos and great matches with Legacy...? Remember how awesome that was! And then...remember how they pooped on the entire thing and decided Kofi didn't exist anymore!?! AWESOME!!!

 

[TimAH]

the undertaker higher power build up will always stand out to me. So much potential. The speculation was all over the place. I had a feeling it was going to be Vince but I thought naaaaah theres no way they would go with such a lame conclusion.

 

[eltracy632]

3 come to mind:

G-TV...rumor was it was supposed to be Goldust but it just stopped out of nowhere.
Austin vs The McMahons- The briefcase was "mysteriously" lifted up as Austin went for it in their match for "ownership" of the WWF, they more or less just dropped it completely.

And the one that bugged me the most was actually in WCW...they had Hogan run down with a hummer and teased it to be Sting, but the storyline was dropped out of nowhere. To this day I wonder where they were going with it, since it clearly was'nt Sting in the driver's seat and actually looked like Nash with a Sting mask.

 

[TimAH]

Another that quickly stands up is the Kane is he alive or is he dead angle. Great mysterious build up. And it ended with a dud. Rey Mysterio returns looking perfectly fine and Kane looks like a moron. I really think they were initially going to have it be Kanes mask in that bag but too many people predicted it so they decided to change directions.

 

[nbrew2119]

For me....this one is very easy

INVASION!!!!

This angle could have been HUGE, but, it was booked to horrible that it was hard to watch sometimes. Now granted, some big names were out due to injury during this angle, like, HHH, Chris Benoit, Kevin Nash, and at the time of this angle, Rikishi was a big name.

There were so many moves during this that made absolutely no sense. A couple examples were, Kurt Angle turning on WWF/E, Stone Cold joining the Alliance, when, he was fired by fax from WCW, Christian joining the Alliance, with no past history with either federation(same with Test).

This could have been a HUMONGOUS money maker, and it ended up being a bust.

 

[NoBloodEra]

The Cena vs. Orton feud started off great and dandy, but they screwed it all up and it got boring as hell. If I ever see these guys at a Pay-Per-View locking it up ever again, I am definately not gonna watch it. The whole thing is just sooooo predictable now and I would rather watch Orton RKO his own grandmother (actually that would be more entertaining than the whole 2 hours of RAW).
NEW STIP:Most finishing moves to the elderly in three minutes, sounds like an idea to me!

 

[THTRobtaylor]

2
Kennedy was going to be Vince's son, we know that... but making it Hornswoggle was one of the dumbest things I had ever seen... I'd have preferred it went to another actual wrestler rather than the comedy... It could have worked with Shelton Benjamin (especially as they had his "mom" at the time), CM Punk, hell imagine if they'd have given it to Matt Hardy... that could have been the angle that put him over the top... Leveraging himself to force Vince to make good for him...

1: Going far back, the Janetty/Michaels Feud in 93... Yeah it got ruined cos Marty dislocated his shoulder at the Rumble, forcing the botch finish... but they dropped the ball so badly with that by using Sherri, who's woman scorned thing was old when she got dumped by Macho... The worrying thing is Vince still loves this kind of angle, he now has Vicki doing the same thing. By the time Jannetty came back he had lost his focus and the whole angle was never the same. He got his title reign, but if a better decision had been made in booking that first match, I really think we'd have got 2 main eventers out of the Rockers...

 

[TheSheaver]

The one that popped into my head instantaneously was The Nexus. It was a great entertaining storyline. Slow to get going or make sense of at first but it developed excellently and the superstars all seemed to work well together and Wade Barrett despite his British accent led the group surprisingly well. Then the WWE decided to go ahead and add John Cena to the mix and let Super-Cena run the show and Nexus lost the limelight and the younger talents of Nexus were left in the dust. Pitiful if you ask me.

 

[Decarow]

I'm going to go with the McMahon is Dead storyline. He was supposed to die in a limo accident. Benoit's actual death really messed that up. McMahon appeared on Raw the next week to do the empty arena tribute show, saying his death was fake. There was no recovering from that. I had a feeling it was going to be a great storyline and now we'll never know what was going to happen.

Another storyline that went to shits was the King Regal storyline. He had it going for him. King of the Ring, a great turn in his career. Possibly a world title match or two. But he failed the drug policy and ruined it for himself.

 

[Charismatic Enigma]

Gotta go with Nexus, talk about a wasted opportunity. One of the first times of the last decade I can recall WWE doing something that I was genuinely surprised by (in a good way), coming hot off the heels of NXT and all of a sudden all these guys with all their momentum show up on Raw and wreak havoc. This has the makings to be a classic, memorable story line in which a group of young rookies grouped together to overthrow the WWE and really kick the youth movement in to gear. They could have completely dominated Raw. They could have possessed all the titles and been a force to be reckoned with not singling out any one superstar but attacking the whole roster, until a big payoff at Survivor Series, where the group would lose power eventually breaking off in to smaller factions, and inner feuds, eventually creating 8 full fledged individual stars.

Instead...we got treated to months worth of Cena's typical spotlight hogging, making a fool of these guys, and making himself appear to be more intelligent and physically stronger than 8 full grown athletic men. Now the angle has gone on too long, broken off in to a second completely nonsensical faction (and misspelled for that matter) added CM Punk, Batistwo, Perfect and IRS jr. to the mix, and basically taken what could have easily been the story line of the year, and turned it in to a watered down pathetic version of what it debuted as. Typical.

 

[Kayoh]

The biggest failed opportunity in WWE History: The WCW Invasion storyline. The entire setup with the McMahons owning all three company was just a pathetic ego-stroke for Vince and it had potential to be literally the biggest storyline in Pro Wrestling (Sports Entertainment) HISTORY. I just wish McMahon would've taken it more seriously. Have Eric Bischoff play an absolute heel but in a different way - have him play the leader of a rebellious WCW roster that wanted to be treated as equals instead of needing to lay down for every WWE superstar despite knowing that they were just as talented if not more. And keep Paul Heyman as the guy running the ECW faction, if you even needed to have an ECW faction at all. Let's face it, most of the guys in that ECW faction were done back then, and the guys that could still go (Jerry Lynn, Nova, 2 Cold Scorpio, Steve Corino, etc) didn't get any kind of attention, and the attention was instead given to the old fucks like Dreamer and the Dudleys. If the WWE could have portrayed that they were genuinely being INVADED by a super group of WCW and ECW talents, they could have made it actually look like their brand was in trouble, and on top of that they could have obviously come out on top, making everybody on the roster look significantly better, PLUS putting younger, green guys that they saw a future in (like Chuck Palumbo, Sean O'Haire, Shawn Stasiak, Reno, Mark Jindrak, etc) in OVW, where guys who actually DRAW MONEY (see: Batista, Randy Orton, John Cena) these days came from. Damn WWE fucked up on this one. Almost so bad that I was tempted to not even post in this thread, but seeing as I didn't see anybody else mention it, I had to vent.

 

[Suxen Redael]

A storyline that had me actually on the edge of my seat was Kofi vs. Orton. This turned out to be a truly vengeful storyline. Orton interrupting Kofi's title match. Kofi destroying Ortons NASCAR. Legacy sneak-attacking Kofi on the regular. Kofi kicking Ortons ass all over the arena followed by a Boom Boom Drop with great height...yeah see, it was awesome. But they butchered the storyline by burying the angle in one RAW match, not even a PPV even though they did have one PPV match. I believe that this story could've lasted at least 2 PPVs with a potential 3rd burial PPV. The angle could've shot Kofi into Main Event status on RAW, instead of IC Champ on a taped Smackdown. I would not mind if WWE Creative decided to rehash the angle based on revenge for the past. That was my blog of the week, feel free to add to my Rep.

 

[Daniel.Wood]

Blame the incredible ego that is Randy Orton for the failure that was Kofi Kingstons push. Boring Orton cried all the way to the boss because Kingston didn't do something super awesome.

Basically. Orton is allowed to throw his toys out of the pram, didn't he do it with Anderson or someone else before Kofi basically getting them fired from the WWE..

I wouldn't mind that much if Orton was at all interesting. The RKO is good. But his gimmick isn't. It doesn't make sense especially with him as a face (actually back then as a heel and in Legacy he was good so this argument is invalid)

 

[awesomeisthemiz]

I would say the NWO Storyline from 02, all signs showed HHH joining the NWO lord knows how that would have gone, but it would have been interesting had Nash not gotten hurt

 

[CleverName51]

I am taking options 1 and 4. I have 2 storylines that really stick out to me. I feel compelled to share them.

Option one: Take a storyline that had potential and had your interested but was ruined for you.

-Discuss why it was ruined for you, What happened that killed your interest in the particular storyline? Was it the right booking move? Why or why not. Lastly, what could have saved said storyline.

This one is probably one that a lot of people share: The Invasion. It could have been great...until Goldberg, NWO, Steiner, and such didn't show up. Instead we had Booker T and DDP and many midcarders. I would have rather seen Goldberg vs Austin...Taker vs Sting (which in 2001 would have been great)...The NWO (Hall, Nash, Hogan, X-pac) vs DX (HHH, Gunn and Road Dogg, HBK)...then some of the matches we ended up getting instead

Finally option four: Discuss an angle that had a good storyline but the superstars involved just never mixed and had no chemistry in the storyline.[/B]

-Discuss why the superstars involved never worked well. Would the different superstars have been a better suit for the said storyline. Was there something else involved that never made sense in the storyline which caused it to fail. If you were to redo it. What would you do differently, would you involve the same superstars or different ones?

Pick one and discuss, hell feel free to do all four if you really want to. I'll start off with one.

It's a more recent example; but the HBK/JBL storyline where HBK had to "sell himself" to JBL before the WM25 match of Taker and HBK.

It didn't work because; well...HBK wasn't a logical choice to be "poor" enough to go that far in selling himself to JBL. Personally someone like Jeff Hardy would have made more sense to be JBL's 'assistant'
They could have played it off Jeff Hardy's real life drug problem and house fire. They could have said that Hardy needed JBL to earn back the money he lost to repair his house and cover his losses. HBK could have played the foil to JBL taking on Jeff Hardy and 'saving him' from JBL...then have HBK vs JBL for the right to face undertaker with Hardy as the Ref..Hardy turns on JBL and bam; match made in a more logical fashion.

 

[Existence_is_Futile]

I'm going to have to say The Unmasked Kane vs The Masked Kane angle.

If you remember this a few years back, a Masked Kane kept attacking Kane, and everyone was wondering who it was. As far as I know, nothing ever came from this, and it could have been a big thing for Kane and the WWE for Kane for the time. Am I wrong about this? did it finish, because if it did, i never saw it.

 

[fredstephenson]

I'm going to have to say The Unmasked Kane vs The Masked Kane angle.

If you remember this a few years back, a Masked Kane kept attacking Kane, and everyone was wondering who it was. As far as I know, nothing ever came from this, and it could have been a big thing for Kane and the WWE for Kane for the time. Am I wrong about this? did it finish, because if it did, i never saw it.

i woz gonna say that one but ya beat me to it lol and nah it didnt end properly the real kane just beat up the masked kane and unmasked him then thru him out the building but you never saw his face its a shame becouse it had potential to rejuvinate the kane character i tink they just dropped the storyline coz the fans were dead during there match it really annoys me when the wwe just drop storylines like that

 

[PsYcho]

How about the year 2000 in WCW and the whole New Blood angle?
Guys, that COULD have been huge! That was WCW's desperate attempt to fight for life which failed miserably. Their intention was to make some of the up and comers into new stars but the angle backfired and we all wound up rooting for the Millionaire's Club.

Besides that, it was so damn hard to tell who was the GooD guys through all of that mess!

As for the Invasion angle, the reason we only got midcarders involved was because that guys like Sting, Goldberg, Luger and the rest were still under a huge guaranteed contract with AOL Time Warner. It would've cost McMahon out the yin yang to have brought those guys over.

 

[Flava Flav's PMing Bitch]

The first thing that comes to mind was Raven's seven deadly sins gimmick. Nothing ever came of it and it's a real shame, Raven has always been a personal favorite of mine, and I always felt he was criminally underused in WWE. The seven gimmick fit Raven perfectly, he had complete control over it, and it would have allowed him to play the cult leader type character that he was best at. Plus, with the gimmick playing out on Heat it would have been a great way to boost younger talent at the time.

 

[Claşşics]

Eddie Guerrero vs Rey Mysterio.

Dueling tag champs at WrestleMania? Fine, because they've had some great matches.
Turning Eddie heel? Cool, because it continued the feud and led to another match (one that wasn't continually botched by Rey's mask).
Eddie is the father of Dominick? BWAH?! Eddie and Rey could've continued to have a great series of matches without the addition of this crappy angle.
-------
Speaking of Eddie, what about the Eddie/Benoit/Austin storyline from 2002? Y'know, where Austin "took his ball and went home". The feud could've done great things for both Eddie and Benoit, probably could've elevated them to main event status that much earlier. Instead, Austin chose to be selfish, and the "feud" only lasted about a week.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

It did get heat... Responsibility for the suckage goes to Rey for allowing his family to be part of that... Rey's wife was not made for WWE the way Vickie was.. Eddie was the only one who came out of that with any credit cos he made it work in spite of the clear awkwardness...

 

[apokalypse]

"Speaking of Eddie, what about the Eddie/Benoit/Austin storyline from 2002? Y'know, where Austin "took his ball and went home". The feud could've done great things for both Eddie and Benoit, probably could've elevated them to main event status that much earlier. Instead, Austin chose to be selfish, and the "feud" only lasted about a week."

it was Austin the one who wanted and ask vince to work with eddie because he's a fan of eddie work, in Eddie book he really thanks Austin for that and its an honor that he got mention from one of biggest star n wrestling industry Steve Austin to work with. the reason he took his ball and went home one of the factor is that Vince wanted Austin to lose in a match with Brock Lesnar without any buildup or any kind at all(here you have Austin who save WWF and the definition of Attitude era lost to the guy in one night without any hype-fued-builtup? Brock vs Austin is PPV event match and they should have a fued), Austin was sick of the writers and scripted promos. if you go back listen or read WWE BYTE THIS with Austin from 2002 to 2003 that he shoot alot against WWE new direction and the writers. Austin said alot of times about hire hollywood writers and scripted promos which make wrestlers sound unnatural not from their heart.

WWE really screw Invasion angle and it could be money making for long period of time if they book properly making WCW legit threat.