You can argue the most important thing in pro wrestling is your first impression, because if you do come out just like a giant turkey around the Thanksgiving period, people are going to laugh at you and you're never going to be able to show your face again. At least when we did the Gobbidi Gooker, somebody was in a suit, but still. The truth is not every single wrestler is create equally, so sometimes you do need a gimmick in order to get that person popular in front of the fans, and well, WWE, given how long they have been around, sometimes have got that very, very wrong. So my name is Simon Mella. I probably made a bad impression when I first started on YouTube too because I am an idiot, but still, hopefully we made it in the end, and here's 10 WWE debuts that were doomed from the start. Number 10, Gable Stevenson. This one kind of goes back to Brock Lesnar and Kurt Engle. They had exploded from the amateur wrestling scene, and they went on to become so good in pro wrestling. I think a lot of individuals decided, well, all we got to do is keep up this trend, and we can populate the pro wrestling system forever. Not quite. Because with both Angle and Lesnar, W.W. We went out of the way to make sure if there were any cracks in their game, we would concrete them over until they could pull the trigger. That's why Brock was team with Paul Heyman and why Kurt fought some Tipalys top stars when he did break through, anything we can do in order to get you where we need you to be. It also does

make perfect sense why WW would want to hire 2020 Olympic old Meslith Gable Steeveson, because it felt like a home run in waiting. As it turned out, well, it didn't really work that way. Because while I'm absolutely sure Gable would have made it in terms of what he eventually probably could do in the ring, everything else just did not click at all.

I mean, maybe we didn't give them enough time,

but WW was also shouting from the rooftops, Hey, everybody, you should see this guy. Now, we actually did okay at WrestleMania 38, where he did get to throw Chad Gable around for a little bit, and even got drafted to Monday Night Raw on October 2021. That was another error. He was nowhere near ready for Raw, so I hope to speed things up. The thing is, though, he's only matching WWE came over 18 months later, and that was back in NXT at the Great American Bash from 2023. He got team with Baron Corbyn as well, a dude that approved time and time again he could work with anyone. Look, I'm just going to hold my hands up and say it was not

that good. Wrestling fans aren't idiots either and straight away they realized, man, this is not going to work or at least not in the way that it is going to be presented. They booed him, Gable Stevenson then got released and we never saw him again. You probably will see him in the UFC very soon. I actually think he'll likely do very well.

Number nine, stalker DDP.

So let me tell you a wonderful story about a man named Diamond's Dallas Page. He decided to jump from being a manager to a pro wrestler when he was in his mid-30s and got so over with the audience in WCW, he became the world champion. I mean, he was calling himself the people's champion before the Rock was calling himself the people's champion. And he wasn't doing this because it was ha ha, funny, funny. It's because everybody was into this dude. And then what did WWE do after they bought WCW? They turned him into a stalker. And this is the equivalent of casting me as someone that has luscious blonde locks. If you don't know, I'm totally bald. But I will implore you to go and watch The Roar when Diamond Dallas Page does reveal himself and whips off his mask. The fans go absolutely crazy, because once again, DDP made them feel warm and fuzzy in their tum-tums. The issue was straight after this, you realize, oh no, this person is the dude that's been stalking The Undertaker and his wife.

Straightaway, we're all miserable. Talk about being miscast. Even DDP had professed

backstage this made no sense. And also do not forget, he bought himself out of his WCW contract

so he could move to WWE early because he wanted to give himself the best possible opportunity

and good grief we did not do right by him. Of course, the Undertaker then destroyed him in their 2001 feud, and after this, it was so difficult to go back to what did make Page so great, because again, now he'd been labelled as a stalker. Anybody in this role would have been better than this, although the story overall was pretty stupid as well. It was a massive misfire, as you can probably tell, it still annoys me. But DDP and WCW, man, is just the best. Number eight, Emolina. So imagine I told you I was going to feed you the best ice cream for around about 18 months. When we did approach that year and a half mark, you'd be so damn excited that I walk out and say, yeah, I'm really sorry,

I actually am just going to give you mediocre ice cream, and now I have to go away again for another 18 months. That's a wild exaggeration, and nothing we're about to talk about is that bad, but one day, WW did wake up and say, hey man, this Emma, she's pretty good, why don't we do a big campaign and transform her into Emolina.

This was back in 2016 and because we were doing a large reset, She's pretty good. Why don't we do a big campaign and transform her into Emily?

This was back in 2016 and because we were doing a large reset, Emma was kept off TV for large parts of it.

But that was okay because we had the videos and in terms of hype, well, it's pretty damn strong.

It was still a bit confusing because the original character was sort of like a clutz and this new one was meant to be a glamour model.

Not sure how those two things do connect together. When, and I kid you not, she walked out on the February 13th, 2017, Raw, and said, you know, I don't want to be Emmelina, so I'm going to come back soon as Emma. Every single person in the building looked around and decided, what a waste of our life we're never getting that time back. Now, some reports suggested that Emma just couldn't play this character in the way that WW wanted her to, but why wouldn't you do some rehearsals beforehand

and why would you spend so much television time promoting something you were never going to follow through on?

Also, what is an Emma Lena? It sounds like something you have with Pasta, but it really

did affect Emma in WWE, because in many ways it was the boy who cried Wolf. You had told us for weeks, months, and almost a year, that something brand new was coming, and then we just went back to what we had anyway. There was also reports out there that it was one big in-joke and WW Creative you've never had anything for this persona.

And if that's true, I mean, what are we doing?

That's totally unfair. For goodness sake, never do that again. Number seven, Veer Mahan. So this one still puts a smile on my face, because over on my ups and down series, I would laugh about this every single week, because do not forget that Veer is coming to Raw. After a while, this was was said so much it did get a little bit sexual because what else was he doing? But these clips started in October 2021, and by February 2022, we were still being told the Veer was coming to Roar. The flub is happening. I remember one of these videos as well said something along the lines of Veer could not be contained for much longer, like somebody had locked him in a drawer, and then finally on April 4, 2002, he did debut, and he beat the crap out of Ray and Dominic Mysterio. Even though the WWE had what felt like decades to plan something, though, as it turned out, they didn't have a clue what Veer was meant to do, so actually sent him back down to NXT. Do you know how mad I was when this happened?

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