00:00It must suck to have been born at the wrong time, to execute a kick-ass guitar solo,
00:04to deafening silence while remaining convinced that their kids are gonna love it. Wrestling's
00:08no different. The WWE style has changed so often over the years, from the baby oil,
00:12drenched juice-assisted super-adonises of the 80s, to the cartoonish and colourful
00:17characters of the new generation, the grungy, foul-mouthed lunatics of the Attitude Era,
00:21the amateur-leaning, unhinged hosses of the ruthless Aggression Era, to the work-great,
00:25lauded indie darlings of the modern era. Some stars found great success being in
00:29the right place at the right time, whilst others saw their shine dimmed by either being a throwback
00:34to a bygone time, or light years ahead of their time. Here are the 10 WWE stars who
00:39wrestled in the wrong era. And hey, if you're watching this and haven't yet subscribed to
00:43PartsFunknown, if you could hit that subscribe button, it would really help out the channel
00:47more so than you know. Thanks everyone.
00:4910. The Revival, The Golden Era
00:51I mean, The Revival's whole schtick is that they were a throwback, that's why they're called
00:55The Revival. And hey, FDR are going to have a great legacy of matches in AEW,
00:59but oh man, with their intense dedication to tag psychology, roughneck southern brawler style,
01:04and most of all a keen awareness of the rules and how and when to break them,
01:07The Revival would have killed in the 80s, back when tag team wrestling really mattered.
01:12In the first ever Survivor Series in 1987, 10 tag teams competed in a single match,
01:17all with names, gear and gimmicks. WWE could only dream of having 10 proper tag teams today,
01:22that's how far the division has fallen, at least on the main roster.
01:25The Revival could have mixed up with The Hart Foundation, The Rockers, Demolition,
01:29The British Bulldogs, and of course, The Brain Busters, if the universe doesn't
01:33Spider-Man meme itself into oblivion first.
01:359. Ken Shamrock, Ruthless Aggression Era
01:38Ken Shamrock missed out on Brock Lesnar by a few years. Ken Shamrock missed out on Kurt
01:43Angle by a few months. I want to see both of those matches so bad.
01:48Ken Shamrock found a fair bit of success during his run in the early half of the Attitude Era,
01:52but man, when WWE gradually slid into a higher level of work rate with the main event promotion
01:56of Angle, Benoit, Eddie, Mysterio and Brock, having Ken Shamrock as part of the Smackdown
02:01Ruthless Aggression landscape would have been fan-fucking-tastic. He would have eaten John
02:05Cena and sent him back to West Newbury with his jorts pretzeled up in his goddamn colon.
02:10The World's Most Dangerous Man was never the best promo, always felt a little out of his depth in
02:14the Attitude Era's gross-out, characterful excess, but as the Olympic Wrestling Machine ushered in
02:18a new era of what main eventers could and should deliver, WWE Champion Ken Shamrock, I could see it.
02:248. Dean Malenko, The Current Era Roses are red, Violets are blue,
02:29Malenko is great, these things are true. Dean Malenko was one of the great unsung
02:33heroes of WCW, a top cruiserweight and a land where the big boys played. Hopes were high that
02:38he would make a splash in WWE, but much like Shamrock, his stiff upper lip and Iceman demeanor
02:43rendered him boring in the eyes of WWE creative who basically gave up on him after the whole
02:48creeping up on Lita like a dad at a Carly Rae Jepsen concert thing failed to get him over like
02:53Rover. His insane technical ability, speed, and fluidity of movement would have made him a
02:57superstar in NXT and an asset to Smackdown's current landscape of super workers like Cesaro,
03:03Seth Rollins, and Daniel Bryan. I mean, Dean Malenko makes a running powerslam look like
03:07a World Ender. He is the best. He's the best. 7. Aja Kong, Current Era
03:12In 1995, Aja Kong made something of a big splash, eliminating four women, including
03:17champion Alundra Blaze, and being the sole survivor at Survivor Series. She was a terrifying
03:22host, even going as far as putting the heebie-jeebies into management because, quote,
03:25that's not how women are supposed to wrestle. Just watch her crack Alundra in the face.
03:30In the epitome of wrestling at the wrong time, the initial plan was for Kong to challenge Blaze
03:35for the Women's Championship at the 96th Rumble, but in the wake of Alundra defecting to WCW and
03:39trashing the belt, WWE responded in kind by putting the entirety of its women's division
03:44in the bin. Sorry about that, Kong. Instead, she would have fit in perfectly in the post-revolution
03:49era of women's wrestling, a face-painted, stiff-working, unsettling monster with a
03:54completely different silhouette to 90% of the women in WWE she could have cleaned up.
03:596. The Great Khali, Golden Era
04:02Poor Great Khali. A special attraction completely robbed of his specialness by being thoroughly
04:07overexposed on weekly TV. Also, the fact he couldn't really walk didn't help, but you don't
04:11need to be able to walk to make bank in the Golden Era as late career Andre the Giant will
04:15attest. The whole Great Khali as world champion hoo-ha, remember when he was world champion,
04:22that would have been so much more palatable in the time of the Andres and the King Kong Bundys,
04:27a foreign monster with a gobby foreign manager going on an undefeated streak,
04:31the vice grip would have been so much more believable as a finisher back in the day,
04:34would have been one of the most feared moves on the planet, shrouded in the camp
04:38mystery of Golden Era 80s WWE. Someone for Hulk Hogan to polish off in the main event
04:43of Wrestlemania, Hulk out of the vice grip, give him another iconic slam big payday for everyone.
04:495. The Viking Raiders, New Generation Era
04:52Oh man, how did WWE screw up the war Viking Raiders machine. A bunch of huge dudes who can
04:57move like lightning with killer chemistry and the kind of beards that launch ships.
05:00The problem was that their gimmick was almost too strong.
05:03Viking, heard WWE, dashing out and heading to the nearest Uncle Smiffy's costume shop
05:08of tawdry knick knack bollocks and returning with all the Norse bulls**t their little arms
05:12could carry. Thing is, that kind of camp colourful ostentation that shows up as
05:15cringeworthy under today's harsher spotlight was all the rage in the pastel smeared 90s.
05:20With an OTT silhouette, a uniquely larger than life gimmick, in the early to mid 90s,
05:24the Viking Raiders could have inherited the Legion of Doom's crown of hyper tough,
05:28hyper violent face painted scary boys and hell, at least it would have saved us from
05:32men on a mission WWE Tag Team Champions. Also, we could have had Viking Raiders vs
05:37the Steiner Brothers and I want that more than I want a vaccine.
05:404. Dean Ambrose, Attitude Era Or in other words, John Moxley I guess.
05:45For real though, if only Dean Ambrose was allowed to go full Pillman in WWE,
05:49what we could have seen. The man has a scary amount of drawling charisma on the mic,
05:54and I am fascinated by the idea of Dean Ambrose but without a script in his hand and the freedom
05:58to be as 90s edgy as he wanted. Genuinely, he could have sat right in the middle of the
06:03Venn diagram of Cactus Jack, Raven and Pillman. A dank haired, crazy eyed, barbed wire wrapped
06:09monster with the kind of hypnotic freewheeling promos that suggest monsters under the skin.
06:14And also, and this may be an unpopular opinion, but he probably wouldn't have pushed a hot dog cart
06:18to the ring, beat up a dummy with random tools or accidentally electrocuted himself with a telly
06:22like a massive f***ing plankton. Just a thought. 3. Ivory, Current Era
06:27I mean we could have populated this entire list with women who were super talented and
06:30would have absolutely burned it down today. Melina, Beth Phoenix, Victoria, Jazz, Molly Holly,
06:36bloody hell AJ Lee left the big dub months before the revolution, and she was one of the most fully
06:41formed characters around. AJ Lee vs Sasha Banks, yes please, but of all the women to feel the most
06:47out of time, it's got to be Ivory. Incredibly talented, ace in the ring Ivory, whose biggest
06:52moments in the Attitude Era saw her thoroughly ruined by China at WrestleMania X-7 as one part
06:57of a sex obsessed purity cult, but saddest of all, saw her being pinned for the WWE Championship by
07:03goddamn 76 year old fabulous Moolah, but hey 1999 was a rough year for everyone.
07:09Ivory was routinely embarrassed and underused, most often outclassed by more well known and
07:14boobier opponents, but going back and looking at her work, hell even decades later looking at her
07:18appearance and evolution, Ivory was one of the best in the game for a time, with the potential
07:22to be a great character as her work as superb heat magnet in RTC proved. She would have been
07:26a great hand in today's post revolution women's division. 2. CM Punk, Attitude Era
07:32This might be a controversial pick, not least because controversy follows CM Punk around like
07:36a lovesick puppy. You could argue that the pipe bomb was an indication of someone who was in
07:40exactly the right place at exactly the right time, an insider indie tweener tearing back the surface
07:45level artifice of wrestling at the height of its staleness, but also, Punk in the Attitude Era
07:49would have been dope, and that's the bottom line, because Pepsi Phil said so. CM Punk, however you
07:54think of him as a wrestler, is one of the greatest mic workers of all time. He is, and just saying,
08:00the preachy straight edge persona work gangbusters against Jeff Hardy in the PG era, just try and
08:05imagine that gimmick, supported by that level of charisma and in ring acumen, in the Attitude Era
08:10against, let's say, Stone Cold Steve Austin. A few of the Attitude Era's favourite things are,
08:15mic workers capable of dropping unscripted bombshells, creepy sanctimonious cults,
08:19and demonising anyone who had the temerity to encourage people to stop stuffing their
08:23bodies with poison. It's true, it's damn true. 1. Braun Strowman, New Generation Era
08:29In 1995, Vincent Kennedy McMahon would have tap danced across an ocean of broken glass to get
08:35someone like Braun Strowman in the mid 90s. After the steroid scandal purged all of the most
08:40musclebound boys from his merry-go-round of ground and pound, he scrambled for other forms
08:45of big to populate his main event, which translated to tall or heavy. Someone like
08:50Braun Strowman, able to achieve that combination of special attraction height, body-ody-ody without
08:56the gas, and crazy speed, all while being more than serviceable on the mic, man the world would
09:01have been his if WCW hadn't gobbled him up first. Braun's gone off the boil now, but his best work
09:06in the company always had an air of throwback about it, a ludicrous cartoon carnival strongman
09:12performing extraordinary feats of strength watching Strowman flipping an ambulance blew
09:17people's minds in 2017. In the New Generation Era, that kind of angle would have guaranteed him
09:22a world title run. And that's our list. Which wrestlers do you think would have found more
09:26success in a different time? Let us know below, and don't forget to like and share this video
09:31around if you enjoyed it, and subscribe to partsFUNknown for more great wrestling content,
09:35and never forget to Jam That Jam.
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