When we bring up 2008 in the WWE, I would imagine that most fans think of the Rick Flair Shaw Michael's retirement match. You remember how I'm sorry I love you. It was a great moment. And then Rick, of course, ignored this stipulation and he kept on wrestling. Of course he did. Hanging up the boots in sports entertainment has at best, I would say, a 34% success rate. You're also getting CM Buck and becoming the world heavyweight champion and we are going

to talk about that later and that amazing John Cena return of the Royal Rumble. So there were

plenty of good moments and you had the Undertaker Edgeview too. Yeah, it was really fun. There's also

the year where WW started to go PG however and that brought about some issues. Vince McMahon,

especially with PR stunt crazy and that was not the best idea.

So I am Simon Miller. I don't have any hair. Let's go through 2008 and see where it all fell down. Number 10, Brandon Walker. Let us not get this wrong. Chris Harris in TNA was quite the dynamic performer. Fans really warm to the guy because he knew what he was doing. and as one half of America's most wanted, him and James Storm were a reason to tune into the show.

They kept that up for most of 2007. So early in 2008, boom, we learned that Harris had signed with WWE. It hit shaky ground instantly because Chris didn't wrestle until March, and that was a house show. And it wouldn't be until July when he turned up in ECW.

At six months of nothing, I can do maths, the flub is happening. He reappeared as Brandon Walker when he confronted Armado Estrada, so it was time to find out what his gimmick was. And yep, he told bad not-knock jokes. Not kidding, that's what he did. You could hear the collective sigh in the room. Estrada, to his credit, played along and Walker's punchline was, I'm going to knock your brains out.

All right, this is a strange way to go about things.

And we all know if you are going to tell bad jokes you go with. There's two fish in a tank and one says to the other, can you drive this?

He did win the match and defeated James Curtis 2 in August, when, if you can believe it, he got let go, so that was his entire run. It just made no sense because no thought had been put into this at all. Felt on the left hand wasn't talking to the right and Brander's highlight reel could fit on a YouTube short. In fact, that would be too long. So it was just the ultimate use of bad talent and it helped nobody. and it also told TNA wrestlers maybe you should Celine D on this and think twice about jumping.

You may get buried. Number nine, the Royal Rumble fiasco. The 2008 Royal Rumble is fun because John Sina had that return, but it does mean it overshadows other talking points. Hornswoggle, for example, entered at number nine, and realizing he was going to get murked, he hid under the ring. He did that a lot.

He saw a dangling entered at number nine, and realizing he was going to get murked, he hid under the ring.

He did that a lot.

He saw a dangly arm at one point and pulled DeMiz to the floor and a ha-ha, that was funny moment, but also kind of exposed him to Mark Henry and Big Daddy Vee, so they went and got him. They were big, he was small. That prompted father Fitveney to walk out before his plan number 27 entry, and sure,

I get this he wanted to save his son, but then they'd just left. The announcers were baffled

when somebody sent word that Finley had been disqualified for using his shaleli, as well as ignoring

his official entrance time. Now, disqualifications in the rumble can do one straight away, but come on,

man, don't enforce these

other rules either. The best thing about this match is how ridiculous it can be, this genuinely

felt disappointing. The best statistic is that Swoggs was out there for almost 30 minutes,

where as Shelton Benjamin got 18 seconds. 2008 was so crazy, there were some interesting ideas,

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