Why did Shane Douglas never make it big?

[foreveryoung]

Listening to some shoot interviews of the guy, he was incredibly articulate, seems very bright and knowledgeable. He was a great heel promo. Decent enough in the ring.. Had a great character as the franchise.. For some idiotic reason Vince had to make him "Dean Douglas" when he was so good as an effective heel as the franchise etc. He had a great look to him. He looked a star more or less

Why did he never make it big?

[Welfare Willis]

Sept 24, 2011 23:48:21 GMT -5 foreveryoung said:

Listening to some shoot interviews of the guy, he was incredibly articulate, seems very bright and knowledgeable. He was a great heel promo. Decent enough in the ring.. Had a great character as the franchise.. For some idiotic reason Vince had to make him "Dean Douglas" when he was so good as an effective heel as the franchise etc. He had a great look to him. He looked a star more or less

Why did he never make it big?

As I understand it, it's generally his inability to deliver a good promo without cursing, his feud with the Clique, his feud with Flair, the fact he rubs so many people in the business the wrong way, he couldn't get enough time off from target, etc.

Shane may just be a victim of timing and his own attitude. Shane got into a fight with the Clique at full power, he was with ECW at a time just before the net could really promote the brand, and his time with WCW was near the end of the brand and he was left high and dry with the Radicalz leaving.

[Crulk Smash!]

He has a terrible personallity behind the scenes.
Everytime I've seen him in/out of wrestling in shoots and behind the scenes , he seems like he has a huge ego.

[Big Evil]

Shane could go in the ring, and he COULD cut a promo without cursing, but when in you're ECW I mean...everyone cursed in their promos. I hate when Shane gets singled out for that. Shane cut some great promos during his last run in WCW, and he even cut good promos as Dean Douglas. The KLIQ f***ed him, that feud wasn't his fault. The issue with Flair? Okay, yeah, that was more Douglas' fault than Flair's. He had an initial good 2 runs in WCW, but then he had beef with Flair by the time he left in '93. He spent the next 2 years shitting on WCW & WWF tremendously, that when he went to WWF in 1995, Shawn & Co wanted to co-operate less than they usually would. And even then, Shane's biggest detractor was Hall more than any of them.

[BlackoutCreature]

In the end he was pretty mediocre over-all. Mediocre in the ring, mediocre on the mic, mediocre charisma. Not bad, but nothing special. He lucked out on his "screaming shooter" gimmick in ECW and got over with it not necesarily because he was really good at it, but because it was so different from anything else happening in the industry at the time that it stuck out like a sore thumb. Within a few years though there were atleast a dozen other guys in the three major companies not only doing similar bits, but doing it better then Douglas ever could (Shawn Michaels and Taz come to mind immediately), killing his only appeal - the uniqueness of his gimmick.

The fact that he was never able to move past the gimmick also speaks to his limitations. He showed up in WCW desperately clinging to a PG-rated version of a character that, outside of ECW, didn't make sense and nobody cared about.

And yes, he had attitude problems and was a major pain in the ass backstage. I know the people he usually had problems with also had major attitude problems of their own, but they were also usually much more proven commodities then Douglas ever was. You gotta learn to pick your fighs in these matters and Douglas never did.

[johnpricesuperstar]

Am I the only guy who remembers Shane in the Early 90s WWF?
When he was a babyface- I think he was in the 1991 Royal Rumble. Lord Alred Hayes even had a call of the action on him on Supertape

[thetower52]

He wasent that good?
Well more of he wasent special he was only decent in the ring and on the mic
he honestly bores the crap out of me on promos and in the ring

[celticjobber]

I think it's because he burnt one too many bridges. He was a hell of a talent, and I thought he was great even in his WCW run where he tagged with Ricky Steamboat.

[azrael502]

acording to him the reason he never made it to the potential he had was Dick Flair

[donny]

-What Shane would probably say: politics from the clique and Ric Flair.

-What I say: he just wasn't that good. He was by no means a bad wrestler, but he was far from great. He seemed to have an attitude like he was Hogan, Austin, HBK, Ric Flair, Bret Hart and The Rock rolled into one. In actuality, he's more of a Ken Kennedy. Good but not great.

-Also, why does everyone think Dean Douglas was a horrible gimmick? Shane could have made it work. Around the same time, there was another new gimmick called "Goldust" a homoerotic freak so obsessed with Hollywood stardom that he dresses up like an oscar. Guess which one of theses gimmicks should win a gooker award on paper.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

Sept 25, 2011 8:08:00 GMT -5 donny said:

-Also, why does everyone think Dean Douglas was a horrible gimmick? Shane could have made it work. Around the same time, there was another new gimmick called "Goldust" a homoerotic freak so obsessed with Hollywood stardom that he dresses up like an oscar. Guess which one of theses gimmicks should win a gooker award on paper.

Dean Douglas. As Mick Foley said in his first book, a know-it-all professor can be kind of annoying but no one's going to buy a ticket to see a guy with a high vocabulary get beat up. Goldust, on the other hand, was a bizarre and unique gimmick.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

Shane Douglas never got big mostly because of Shane Douglas, he's his own worst enemy.

But his Franchise stuff in ECW remains beyond reproach. He may have been a right-place, right-time guy, like ECW's own Hogan, but this is a guy who didn't wrestle for months at a time in 1999 because of an injury and was still over as hell.

[repomanfan]

Probably a few factors. Bad gimmicks, bad attitude, not enough charisma etc......He was simply one of those guys that was never supposed to make it big. Why the analysis? If Hogan never made it big than that would be something worth discussing, but Shane Douglas?

[Crusty Ruffles]

I really think that, attitude aside, it's just a matter of being nothing special. In ECW, he was a screaming loudmouth that swore a lot and had a lot of sexual innuendos with a hot chick. He was so obnoxious that you wanted to see him get demolished.

If you remove the the valet and the screaming F-bomb promos, you're left with a guy that's pretty average. He can occasionally deliver a big performance, but he's never someone that's going to be a huge star on a mainstream level. I think you can really see that in his work before ECW, then in the WWF and to a lesser extent the end of WCW due to the creative situation and his physical limitations.

The stars just didn't align for an average worker in this case.

[repomanfan]

Sept 25, 2011 10:39:04 GMT -5 Crusty Ruffles said:

I really think that, attitude aside, it's just a matter of being nothing special. In ECW, he was a screaming loudmouth that swore a lot and had a lot of sexual innuendos with a hot chick. He was so obnoxious that you wanted to see him get demolished.

If you remove the the valet and the screaming F-bomb promos, you're left with a guy that's pretty average. He can occasionally deliver a big performance, but he's never someone that's going to be a huge star on a mainstream level. I think you can really see that in his work before ECW, then in the WWF and to a lesser extent the end of WCW due to the creative situation and his physical limitations.

The stars just didn't align for an average worker in this case.

Ding ding. We're not talking about a guy who had mega talent and charisma, we are simply talking about a guy who was average.

[probable]

Indeed he was just average, and by all accounts, a troll in real life.

[Deleted]

I have a theory that it's because in the early years of ECW, the actual wrestling talent was almost nonexistant, and it made Shane Douglas seem great. Here was an athlete with an attitude problem amongst a bunch of idiots hitting each other in the head with old Nintendos.

But in WWF or WCW, with the same gimmick he would be just another guy.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

Bad luck and attitude. He hit the WWF in the mid 90's at a time where if you weren't a friend of the kliq, or already established, you were going nowhere and his attitude most certainly didn't help him there one bit. He finally looked to be getting a shot in WCW toward the end but by that point his ship had sailed, too many injuries and too much terrible booking to contend with and the company was pretty much on it's last legs.

He's not someone who would ever revolutionise wrestling, but I see him as being at least on the same level as HHH or Jeff Jarrett, a guy with above average mic and ring work who should have been a transitional heel champ at least once in one of the big two... but it wasn't to be.

["Hollywood" Cactus Matt]

Sept 25, 2011 1:08:40 GMT -5 johnpricesuperstar said:

Am I the only guy who remembers Shane in the Early 90s WWF?
When he was a babyface- I think he was in the 1991 Royal Rumble. Lord Alred Hayes even had a call of the action on him on Supertape

Just yesterday I was watching the WWF Superstars of Wrestling episode that aired the day of the 1991 Rumble, and Shane Douglas - complete with bleach-blond mullet - was indeed listed as one of the participants. IIRC, he lasted a while in the Rumble match, too.


And honestly, I think the reason Douglas never made it big is mainly due to his attitude. To use an example from my own life, there was this guy at my job, Nate. Nate was a good enough worker - got things done in a timely manner, knew all the details about what exactly it was that he had to do, etc. - but he had a piss-poor attitude about everything. For lack of a better term, he had a HUGE chip on his shoulder. One day, he screwed something up at closing time, and left it either because "f*** it," or because he intended to finish it the next day. Either way, he was being reprimanded by the boss; since it was not the first time he had been warned about his attitude, he had certain privileges taken away. Well, that just wouldn't do, so Nate up and left one day in the middle of a shift and quit. Now, when I joke about bringing him back, the boss says that Nate was "a cancer" at work, and "there is no way in hell, even if he offered to work for free." (my boss is always willing to give someone a second chance, even bringing back people who have served jail time and had to be off of work for months at a time; saying he's never going to bring someone back is almost unheard-of.)

I don't know the details about Shane Douglas behind the scenes, nor do I claim to, but if so many promoters are unwilling to work with him, well ... that says a lot about his attitude, since he was always better than competent in the ring.

[EvenBaldobombHasAJob]

because of Ric Flair [/kayfabe]