Hello Ch'punkimaniacs, I have no real updates this week on the current state of wrestling because I have no TV. I can still wing it by saying The Shield and D Bry were great in the ring. I heard Triple H and Steph said stuff, and Big Show got mad. See I don't even need to read about Raw or watch to know what's going on. I did catch NXT, but it was from July. All I have to say is Bayley and Emma will never be this cool in WWE.
In 2001, Sean O'Haire was the future of WCW. Of course we all know that WCW went bankrupt a few months into 2001, and now WCW's young talent had to compete for the national spotlight in the WWE. For the most part O'Hare was just another faceless Alliance (a faction made up of WCW and ECW wrestlers) member. He began the 2001 invasion of WWE as one half of the WCW Tag Champions with his partner Chuck Palumbo. They had a few matches with the Hardys, which I thought was who they would feud with and drop the belts to. Instead, Palumbo and O'Haire lost the belts to Kane and Undertaker so Taker could finally feud with his arch-enemy. Test or somebody?
After losing the WCW Tag Titles, Palumbo, and O'Haire separated. O'Haire was sent to OVW and the WWE DMC (Dark Match Circuit) until early 2003. The first we saw of O'Haire were these awesome promos claiming adultery wasn't so bad, or that God may not exist, and if he does, he'll forgive you for anything you've done wrong anyway:
After watching this and other promos, the IWC could not wait for The Devil's Advocate, Sean O'Haire. He was on the top 10 list of almost every "Wrestler of the Week" poll, and he hadn't even been in an arena yet.
The sad part of this was he had to debut, and it was less than what I hoped. His first two appearances were backstage segments where he encouraged Dawn Marie to flash and then had Brian Kendrick streak around the arena, even into the audience. The Kendrick streaking scenario was worse because it seemed WWE was imitating a popular clothing brand's commercial that was popular at the time. He also seemed to be a face at one point as he stood up for Kendrick, against a bullying heel (I can't remember who).
WWE had finally decided to make O'Haire as a heel during his in ring debut. Except WWE didn't just rely on O'Haire to use heel mannerisms and hijinks during matches to convey that he was a dangerous man. WWE decided to pair Sean with Roddy Piper. At that time Piper was involved in a feud between Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon. At WrestleMania 19, Roddy helped Vince in his match with Hogan. The storyline was Vince wanted O'Haire to be taught "true evil" by Piper. The earlier promos showed Sean could do evil well without Vince or Piper. Also, this was Piper's first time as a heel since 1987. The only heel Piper most of us knew was the guy in the old Rock n Wrestling cartoons.
O'Haire's first major feud in his Devil's Advocate persona was with Rikishi. This was a nostalgia feud and played off Piper's feud with Jimmy Snuka, when Piper broke a coconut over Snuka's head 20 years earlier. Only this time, O'Haire and Piper hit Snuka with the coconut, only to have Snuka's nephew Rikishi stand up for his uncle. A match was set for Backlash 2003. The match was a mess and seemed like an okay Smackdown match, not a ppv quality match. In all fairness, this whole ppv was just a long Smackdown episode, except for the main event.
Eat your coconuts, brotha! Rikishi vs. Sean O'Haire at Backlash 2003:
While O'Haire went from devil's advocate to senior advocate, WWE had to increasingly rely on the announce team to remind us he was evil. Cole and Taz would tell us about O'Haire's evil side. Things like, "He likes spiders, Cole" and "You know this guy's weird, Taz." 2003 was also WWE's worst year as a publicly traded company, and I'm sure stuff like rehashing Hogan vs Piper and Brock Lesner throwing cripples down the stairs also didn't help.
By the Summer of 2003, things were looking up for O'Hare. Piper had left a few months earlier, and Sean was booked as a monster heel that destroyed anything in his way. He was being booked similar to Batista, who was on RAW at the time. He wasn't given any of the fanfare Dave received though, and was relegated to Velocity mostly. An untimely motorcycle accident took him off television, and by the time he recovered he was basically let go.
He was also accused hitting a woman and the fact that WWE already had their monster heel with an MMA background (that's how Batista was booked first, on RAW), in Batista, meant O'Hare wasn't coming back to WWE for a while, if ever.
This has been Forever Heel, but I'm not telling you something you don't already know.
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