I’d have to say Seven in WCW. All those creepy vignettes, and then he debuted and FLEW INTO THE RING. He proceeds to shit on the gimmick and bury Russo.
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Are we considering debut to be “first appearance only”? Because Big Show’s whole initial deal in WWE in 1999 was pretty lame. He debuted by failing to help Vince McMahon beat Steve Austin, and then his first four TV matches went: “no contest, no contest, clean pinfall loss, DQ loss” before he finally got to squash Test in 30 seconds.
Who’s that coming from under the ring? IT’S PAUL WIGHT! It’s Paul Wight!!
I still think the ring entrance was great with the way they “floated” him down the aisle and into the ring. The vignettes were way too creepy and they blew it up before it got any legs.
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Shockmaster.
Nothing else needs to be said
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Emmalina. Months and months of stupid vignettes just to come out and say ehhh I’m going back to my old character.
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There are so many obvious one that have already been mention here and are all good example. If i have to pick one outside those, i would go with KISS demon.
Nothing against KISS as i’m a big fan of the band and they made a boat load of money with giving the trademark for the character. The plan was for the character to become a main eventer and they even had brian adams in the role and use the band to introduce the character, then the character disappeared, only to return a few months later with somebody else in the role and lost to terry funk in his debut match.
This was a total disaster and WCW got screwed big time with this deal.
Vince has some weird thing about getting a glamour character over. He’s doing the same thing with Mandy and Lacey.
Shockmaster was infamous but oh so hilarious.
Gobbledy Gooker was pretty terrible. Granted, it was a giant egg teased for a while. Not sure what else people were expecting from thst.
The Yeti was pretty bad too.
Mike awesome for WCW
He was the reigning (but not defending) ECW champ at the time and he comes to nitro to attack Kevin Nash…and he has a fanny pack on.
Imagine having a world champion of a rival promotion debut on your show. Possibilities are endless. Wearing a fanny pack beating up Nash and saying two sweet before leaving was what they came up with
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I can’t remember if this was a debut or re-debut, but I’m going to put Brodus Clay in here. All the promos leading up to it was him being a ruthless man in the ring that was going to kill you… then his first night, cue the Funkadactyls.
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What’s wrong with fanny packs? How else you gonna hold your cash, cards and pills?
I really felt bad for That 70s Guy gimmick. But that match mistakenly throwing Shaggy 2 Dope off the Partridge Family bus was classic.
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It’s probably the worst use I’ve ever seen if having a current champ come to your brand. Only other time was Flair in 1992.
Imagine if WWF instead of having him go over in the Rumble decided to have him do a mid card gimmick and he debuted with a fanny pack on a random run in that made no sense and delivered a horrible promo.
And you wonder why one won the war and other lost
But to be fair, awesome didn’t debut as that 70’s guy, that was his 3rd gimmick during is run in wcw. But i agree that they really didn’t know what to do with him. First he as pretty much a tone down version of his ecw character, then he was the fat chick thriller which tanked, then they did that 70’s guy which again tanked and finally put him in team canada which kinda worked but was a hard sell.
The guy had a pretty good debut as himself but it went downhill afterward. The only example that could compare to him was bret hart in wcw.
But he had A FANNY PACK!!!
Burn him in oil.
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