Overshadowed By Awesome / Pro Wrestling

• Bob Orton Jr. was a well-respected wrestler in his day, but was nowhere near as popular as his son would become.
• Mildred Burke was the undisputed queen of professional wrestling up through the Golden Age of Early Television, often headlining shows outright. But the National Wrestling Alliance favored her rival, June Byers, so they treated her as their champion and basically froze Burke out of the US. To add insult to injury: ask a lay fan about the earliest female stars of wrestling, 90% won't answer with Burke or Byers, but The Fabulous Moolah (the other 10% probably say "Wendi Richter").
• After Finn Bálor defeated Kevin Owens for the NXT title at Beast in the East, the latter challenged the former to a rematch at NXT Takeover Brooklyn the next month in a ladder match. Bálor retains the belt in a main event that would have been an instant classic... had it not been overshadowed by the Sasha Banks vs. Bayley Women's title match that preceded it. While the latter match is largely considered the best match of 2015, the actual main event is considered an afterthought in what was a landmark night in women's wrestling history. So badly was Bálor/Owens overshadowed that their Beast in the East match is more fondly remembered despite fans agreeing that the rematch would have been the better match had it happened any other night.
• Lanny Poffo. When your brother is RANDY SAVAGE...
• In 1995 Luna Vachon was ranked 306 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated's top 500 wrestlers list, which usually only lists males. This doesn't get much comment because that glass ceiling had already been shattered by Miss Texas, who also ranked higher at 249. From 2008 onward (when they noticed Impact Wrestling's Knockout division) PWI just gave women their own category, which has at least succeeded in keeping people talking.
• Money in the Bank 2011: On a night where Christian wins a world title, Daniel Bryan unexpectedly triumphs in a Money in the Bank ladder match, and CM Punk wrestles John Cena in a five-star classic and wins his first WWE Championship, it's easy to forget about Alberto Del Rio's victory in the RAW Money in the Bank ladder match.
  • 2011 in general is mostly remembered for the second "Summer of Punk". That year had many memorable moments and storylines, including the Randy Orton and Christian feud, Mark Henry's "Hall of Pain", Daniel Bryan's first world title win, Edge's retirement, and The Rock and John Cena's promising to have a match at WrestleMania 28, and in the end all of them ended up being overshadowed one way or the other by Punk's rise to superstardom. It's remarked that going up against the Summer of Punk is one of the reasons why Del Rio's ultra-push that year got so derailed and ultimately ensured he was never going to connect with the audience as a real top star.
• Also in 1999, a talented wrestler by the name of Gary Steele became the first resident of the UK to become NWA World Heavyweight Champion. Unfortunately, he beat the much more popular Naoya Ogawa and his reign only lasted seven days before Ogawa took the belt back^note Ogawa wasn't seen as the best pro wrestler but he did have the credibility of an Olympic Silver Medal and beating the crap out of Shinya Hashimoto. They might not have been in love with Ogawa but Steele wasn't exactly the person they wanted taking him down. His later stint as Heavyweight Champion in NWA United Kingdom Hammerlock showed Steele could be a decent champion, but he clearly wasn't the best choice in '99.
• Orville Brown is an unfortunate case. He was an 11-time Midwest Wrestling Association World Heavyweight Champion and a favorite of the National Box And Wrestling Association, which led to him becoming the first National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Champion as it slowly overtook the old commission as the USA's main governing body. Brown held the NWA title for 475 days (nearly 16 months) before he had to vacate the belt and retire due to a car accident. The next champion, Lou Thesz, not only went on to have several reigns much longer than Brown's, not only spent much of those reigns taking the belts from rival claimants to the title of World Champion, not only helped in the establishment of another world international powerhouse in LLI/UWA but also helped invent US-style pro wrestling as we know it, giving us the power bomb, German suplex, STF and of course, the Lou Thesz press.
• Nicole Savoy and Mayu Iwatani debuted at the same time, the former being seen as one of the top prospects o North America, the latter being a tiny model people were skeptical about if they hadn't completely overlooked her in favor of Yuzuki Aikawa. When they matched up in four years at World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM's USA Tour, Savoy's career was just starting to pick up while Iwatani was debuting in at least her third country and had become the third most important baby face in what was arguably the top Joshi fed of Japan.
• 3MB was a fairly decent gimmick that had the misfortune of happening at the same time there were not one but two other trios built upon never losing. The baby faces had to beat somebody, so 3MB became joke jobbers. They still stood out as a hilarious comedy heel stable, but even that's becoming moot as the thought of a hilarious trio of WWE wrestlers nowadays will make fans think of something completely different.
• The whole gimmick behind Owen Hart's Face–Heel Turn was him tired of living in the shadow of his more popular older brother Bret Hart, even though Owen was a very well-respected wrestler and just as much as a great technical wrestler.
• A Randy Orton vs. Triple H match wouldn't be seen as anything special by most fans regardless of the circumstances, but their encounter at WrestleMania 25 is seen as an epic failure primarily because of the classic bout between The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels that happened earlier in the night and the crowd being completely drained from it.
• Rocky Johnson was one of the most popular wrestlers of the 1970s. His son is one of the most popular wrestlers of all time. And one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the current century.
• At the 2015 War of the Worlds, Kyle O'Reilly and Tetsuya Naito was a matchup between two opponents who had seen comparable levels of success. In about one year's time they were scheduled for a rematch at the 2016 Global Wars and Naito was at the top of the pro wrestling world leading Los Ingobernables de Japon and holding the New Japan IWGP Heavyweight Title. O'Reilly... wasn't.
  • O'Reilly never really enjoyed the same level of popularity or success that his Future Shock teammate Adam Cole did after the team broke up. They're back together in The Undisputed Era, but even then, Cole is the leader and the main start of the stable.
  • Speaking of The Undisputed Era, some fans joked that the Undisputed Era vs Roderick Strong and Pete Dunne match at NXT Takeover: New Orleans "dragged the show down" by being merely very good, as opposed to the instant-classic status of the other matches on the card (most reviews rated the match around 3 1/2 stars, while the others were rated 4+ stars)
• Does anyone remember the main event for WrestleMania 13, when The Undertaker beat Sycho Sid to win his second world title? No, because that will always be the night of the Bret Hart vs. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin submission match and the subsequent Face/Heel Double-Turn.
• In 1999, two wrestlers named Blitzkrieg and Super Dragon were given a tryout match on WCW Thunder. Even back then Super Dragon was talented, but he hadn't found the silent badass gimmick that would make him one of the biggest indy stars of the early 2000s. Blitzkrieg, on the other hand, pulled off moves that hadn't been seen before and stole the show. In an interview, Dragon told a story of how when they got back to the locker room, Juventud Guerrera and Psicosis were marking out over Blitzkrieg. In the end, Blitzkrieg walked away with a WCW contract and Super Dragon didn't.
• The classic, developmental, black and gold incarnation of NXT scored several hits over WWE's main roster:
  • The main event of Survivor Series 2019 between Becky Lynch, Shayna Baszler and Bayley was considered a little underwhelming by some because it succeeded the War Games that took place that same weekend, which was a pretty awesome match.
  • The card of WrestleMania 34 is seen as one of the most solid of the event's history, boasting matches such as Ronda Rousey and Kurt Angle vs. Stephanie McMahon and Triple H, the return of The Undertaker and Asuka vs. Charlotte Flair. The problem? It took place at the same weekend as NXT TakeOver: New Orleans, which was an entire card of awesome, starting with the seven-way Ladder match for the Northamerican title, and finishing with one of the most epic chapters of the Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa rivalry.
• Several moderately successful stars from WWE's developmental system often find themselves outshined by their megastar classmates. To wit:
  • Shelton Benjamin is often regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers to have never won a world title and a major Ensemble Dark Horse. Unfortunately, he's a member of the famous OVW Class of 2002, which contained four megastars: Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Batista, and Randy Orton. Not to mention that Lesnar also became a megastar in MMA, and Cena and Batista became successful actors. Their careers have eclipsed his so much that many people forget that Benjamin was in the same class as them.
  • Elijah Burke had this problem in WWE's revived ECW brand. He was positioned as one of the brand's rising young stars and indeed had a respectable amount of talent, enough to be acknowledged by Vince McMahon himself. Unfortunately for Burke, he was part of the most stacked roster in the show's history. His contemporaries included future WWE Champions Bobby Lashley and The Miz, future Impact World Champion and indy star John Morrison, and worst of all, future all-time great and bonafide Living Legend CM Punk. With that kind of competition Burke had no chance of standing out, which is one of the reasons why he never made it past being a glorified jobber in WWE. He would end up having much more success in TNA, where the competition wasn't quite as stiff.
  • WWE NXT has The Shield — not only was the stable itself massively successful, all three members would go on to become megastars in their own right and dominate the wrestling industry for the next several years after they broke up. Despite producing several stars over the course of the decade since the show was reworked into a brand for WWE's developmental system, nobody has managed to attain anywhere close to the level of success of the Shield besides the Four Horsewomen (Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and Bayley), and they're in an entirely different division altogether.

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