[CaptainCrunch]

Ok, I'll say it, I'm a cyclical insomniac, and its hit me hard over the last week or so. I'm sitting here at one in the morning abouts, and I thought I'd do some late night writing. I'm going to split this into two lists, I'll handle debuts tonight, and returns sometime tomorrow.


Back in the day, wrestler debut's were handled differently. You'd get weeks of vignettes introducing the wrestler, how he was coming to clean up or destroy the territory or in the case of TL Hopper, clean the toilets. They'd never mention where the wrestler had worked before. But you knew when he was showing up and what his character was. That changed, we got the debut of the outsiders un announced. Wrestlers would show up at the Rumble, or any other main PPV, or we'd get mysterious non descript videos that would hint at or never reveal the wrestler. It made things more interesting.


Now before I jump right in, it was the common belief that the debut made the wrestler, but in the case of some of the ones I reveal below, often times while the debut was amazing the wrestler would eventually peter out and fail and have to be repackaged. We'll touch on that tonight.


So without further ado, here we go, the best debuts in wrestling.


1) Chris Jericho - Monday Night Raw Aug 9th, 1999.


I think when we look back of wrestlers as a pure creative force, nobody can beat Chris Jericho. Criminally ignored and under utilized and told to do whatever he wanted to in WCW, Jericho created masterful angles like the man with 1001 holds when he feuded with Malenko. His whiny apologizing heel turn, and of course his feud with Goldberg. In the end though Jericho couldn't wait to go to the WWE and took a paycut to do it. In the months leading up to Raw we didn't get Jericho videos. We got a count down clock, it was amazing and built massive anticipation, and even though most fans figured it was Jericho thanks to the internet, the timing was perfect when the clock ran down to zero in the middle of the Rock promo, and we got this.





Now this was one of those debuts that didn't work out that well for Chris, even in his books he hated his promo because he felt it was weak. There were also complaints that Jericho was arrogant and stiff and he found himself sliding down the card and eventually had to reinvent himself.


2) Scott Hall - WCW Nitro May 27th 1996


In a rare moment of genius that changed the wrestling world forever, Scott Hall debut with no warning. During a jobber match Scott Hall came through the crowd, Grabbed a mic and and said "You know who I am, but not why I'm here." He called out WCW and said "You wanted a war, you got a war". Hinting that Scott Hall was still working for WWE and that things had gotten real. Later on Kevin Nash came out and continued the War narrative, It was so different and so tense, and WCW and Eric played it perfectly. "We are taking over, you wanted a war you got one"





3) Undertaker - Survivor Series Nov 22, 1990


We'd seen big men in the WWE before, but nobody had ever seen a crowd intimidated like it was that night when we first heard the Undertakers funeral based theme and saw him for the first time as he slow walked to the ring, dressed in black and looking like a corpse. Watch the video, the fans were completely intimidated, and it took about 5 minutes to establish Taker as a monster as he destroyed his competition.





4) John Cena - Smackdown- June 22, 2007


John Cena at this point was a relative unknown having just graduated from OVW. On that night Angle who had terrible luck throughout his career with open challenges (See Daniel Puder), called out the roster, and John Cena responded. when Angle asked him why he was worthy of being in the ring with him, Cena replied "Ruthless Aggression", then slapped Angle. This debut wasn't great in terms of fireworks or entrances, but the match itself was outstanding and it established Cena as what you would call a top prospect.






Again this was another case of not living up to his debut as John Cena as a whitebread face just didn't work and he slid down the card to the point that he was informed during the WWE tour of Europe that he was probably going to be released. What saved him was his ability to free style rap to the boys in the back and this lead to the genius Doctor of thuganomics character that propelled him back up the card.


5) Kane - Bad Blood October 5, 1997


This whole thing was brilliantly done as Undertaker had recently broken things off with Paul Bearer and Bearer informed him that his brother was alive. At bad blood and what tends to be forgotten was that Taker had an outstanding cage match with Shawn Michaels. At the end the arena turned red and we got a look at Kane. A mysterious masked man lead to the cage by Bearer, and while Undertaker was a large man, Kane could be best described as a mountain. Kane reached the cage tore the door off and stood face to face with his brother. This was the first time in his career that Undertaker sold as he looked shocked and scared. Kane then scooped up Taker with the Tombstone and planted him. This was an amazing and intimidating debut, and for the first time we saw someone even more frightening the the Undertaker. When you watched this the biggest thing tough that sold it was Vince McMahon at the announcing table "That's got to be Kane!!!"





6) Brock Lesnar -Raw March 18, 2002


Brock Lesnar is the beast, there's no question, and there was no more perfect way to debut him then to have him come out and destroy everyone. Coming through the crowd, he crushed everybody in his path to the glee of Paul Heyman and instantly established himself as a force.





7) The Shield - Survivor Series Nov 18, 2012


We kind of knew the Shield was coming, I mean they'd been put together in NXT as a heel group, destroyed everyone in their path with their gang tactics and had a great feud with the Wyatt family. The Shield came out of the crowd, power bombed Ryback through a table and would go on to establish themselves as a great faction, bringing back an aspect of wrestling that I think needs to be more prevalent.





8) Tazz - Royal Rumble Jan 23 2002


Tazz had gained a lot of notoriety in ECW as the human suplex machine long before Suplex City. Kurt Angle was the WWE undefeated Champion and he was slated to take on a mystery opponent at Raw in New York City. We soon found out who the mystery opponent was as we heard Tazz's awesome theme and he marched out to the ring and had a amazing and physical match with Angle before ending Angle's undefeated sleep with a sleeper.





9) Kevin Owen's - Raw 2015


Kevin Owen's is an exceptional heel, he's great on the mic, and he can flat out wrestle. He ran roughshod over NXT and made his debut on Raw when he confronted John Cena and challenge him When John Cena tried to give Owen's some friendly advice veteran to rookie, Owen's sneered and told Cena that he had basically been wrestling for longer then him, and then did what Kevin Owen's did best.





10) Goldberg - WCW Nitro Sept 22, 1997


I was torn on this one, because Goldberg's WWE debut had a historic feel to it. But this was the start of something special and we didn't know it then, it lead to the rise of a rare homegrown superstar, the start of the streak and a period of dominance in WCW. The debut worked because at the end Goldberg looked at the camera and held up one finger.





Honorable mentions


Paige defeats AJ Lee for the Diva's Championship, AJ Styles WWE debut, Radicalz WWE debut, Ric Flair's WWF debut proclaims himself as the real worlds champion. Mankind debuts on Raw to a creep factor of 10 and beats Bob Holly, later that night he destroys the Undertaker.


Later on today, the greatest returns in wrestling history.