Wrestlers You Ruined for Yourself

[Mr Chop]

Premise is thus; a wrestler (or tag team, faction, whatever) that you have ruined for yourself by knowing to much about the business or general smarkerry and such.

For instance, I ruined Scott Steiner for myself. Due to him apparently being a real life nutter and general arsehole. However, he's also a really hilarious and entertaining promo. So for a long time, I missed out on gold mostly because I didn't like that he was mean to Ric Flair!

[Powder]

Roman Reigns. I think I can speak for myself and thousands of others in that the modern fan knows way too much about what goes on behind the scenes. Roman Reigns is the poster boy of someone getting ruined by knowing too much. If he made his debut in the 80s or even the 90s I think he would have been universally loved in the way that Vince wanted, but we all knew from the Shield's debut that he was the next "chosen one" and that he was being protected and pushed all the way.

Take all of the reports, backstage info, and the smark mark fanboy info that we know away, and Reigns would have been just fine.

[mizfan]

I hate to say it, but Liz and Savage kind of fall under this for me. As much as I love the character arc, it's tough for me to not think of how Savage treated the real Liz and how this contributed to her problems later in life.

[Prime Time]

Yeah, I second that one.

[mizfan]

Kurt Angle might be one for me too, and I don't mean because all his matches in the last 5 years are either sad or terrifying. I can't unhear the story about him always urging Eddie Guerrero to sell less so they could cram more moves in the match. Really made me look at his matches a bit differently in retrospect.

[Prime Time]

Hadn't heard that, but it doesn't surprise me. Always thought that his stuff was better in those early days when he was very much the junior partner, and his aptitude for wrestling was supplemented by working with people who had the brain to get the best out of him.

[LK3185]

I remember this match Angle had with Jeff Hardy for Impact at a PPV, it was just 30 minutes of them doing all their spots because they were allowed to do that.

I went with a 15 minute Hardcore match between AJ/Dreamer as the MOTN in my spreadsheet because it was structured way better as an actual match.

Not that Angle doesn't have great matches but his tendency was to shove every spot in.

Not many wrestlers been ruined for me, I expect most to be great humans and so the actual performer has to do something so distasteful that I refuse to watch.

[Prime Time]

Just wondering if anyone would put Jake in this category.