1. Vince McMahon signs The Undertaker & Triple H after WCW fails to
utilize them successfully
In 1990, WCW had a character named “Mean” Mark Callous, a large man mostly part of The Skyscrapers tag team with Dan Spivey and manager Teddy Long. The duo broke up and Callous started a singles run of his own.
After being pushed into a US Championship program with Lex Luger, Callous was pinned clean and rather quickly by Luger at the 1990 Great American Bash. Shortly thereafter, WCW decided not to renew Callous’s contract.
In October of 1990, Callous signed with the WWF, and at Survivor Series, debuted as The Undertaker.
All the championships later and, of course the 21-0 streak at WrestleMania, makes it unthinkable that he was with a company other than WWE. I could go on for days about Undertaker’s accomplishments, but we all know about them. It is very easy to say that who knows where wrestling would be today if this jump never happened. Amazingly, this following might be as important.
In 1994, Triple H (Jean Paul Levesque) was starting out in WCW. He was originally known as Terra Ryzing, however shortly after was repackaged as a snobby French competitor Jean-Paul Levesque.
He teamed with Lord Steven Regal (William Regal) since they had similar characters. In early 1995 Levesque left WCW after his 1 year contract expired as WCW did not wish to push him as a singles competitor.
Later in 1995, Levesque singed with the WWF and became known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley, a play on his WCW character. Helmsley was a solid midcard talent, but no more than that, during the first year of his WWF run.
At Wrestlemania 12, Helmsley was chosen as the returning Ultimate Warrior’s jobber of the day, however, was told he was going to be rewarded with a King of the Ring win and the Intercontinental Championship in return.
Those plans stalled as Helmsley became the whipping boy for the Madison Square Garden “Curtain Call” incident, and his push was stalled until October 1996, when he defeated Marc Mero for the Intercontinental Championship on Raw.
After a small rise up the card through 1997, it was the fall of ’97 that Helmsley’s career started to take off, as he was paired with Shawn Michaels as the original Degeneration-X.
Helmsley’s character also started to evolve from the rich snob to more of a punk with a bad attitude. Helmsley eventually became the leader of DX after HBK’s injury and went on to lead the group, evolving into Triple H.
Triple H skyrocketed into the legend he is today with 13 World championships & 23 championships overall.
He is the heir apparent to the WWE throne as he is married to Stephanie McMahon. Imagine if WCW had thought to push him in 1995…where would the company & wrestling as a whole would be today?
