Failure is a very strong word, but fortunately in professional wrestling it is very rarely permanent.

The sport is so crazy and so fast moving that wrestlers usually have the ability to climb out of any creative hole.

Sure, it often takes a deft booking hand, but those who are in the business long term usually have to reinvent themselves at least a couple of times

along the way, in some cases taking them from the very bottom to the tippy top. Today we will

speak about some of those mountain climbers in WWE specifically. At one point every person on

this list has experienced failure but was able to escape WWE's outhouse and make it to

the penthouse. All of us, every single one of us, experienced failure in some form during

our lives. Often it teaches us things that no volume of success ever could and proves a real

tangible catalyst for positive change. That is certainly the case with some wrestlers on this list and in this video, but with others,

let's be honest, we're still trying to figure out what the hell creative was thinking.

I'm Andy from What Culture, and here are 12 WW failures who became world champion.

Number 12.

Cain!

Glenn Jacobs surely knew that he was struggling as a cosplay version of Diesel as the calendars turned to 1997. Kevin Nash, the original Diesel, had left the WWF for WCW in 1996, so Vince McMahon stuck

the gimmick on one of Jim Cornett's monsters from down in Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

It was never going to work, but that dude somehow ended up becoming WWE champion.

Granted, Jacobs did not win the belt as Diesel, quote, unquote, because he'd left that gimmick

behind for another one by October 97.

Kane debuted by ripping the door from Hell in a Cell as Sean Michaels wrestled the

Undertaker at In Your House Bad Blood, then smashed his Cathay brother with a tombstone and left.

Nobody was quite sure whether or not Kane would be around after Undertaker inevitably beat him

at WrestleMania 14, but fans were in love with

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