As most people are aware by now, Kevin Nash has officially ended his relationship with WWE. The two sides had been negotiating for awhile, but Kevin, being unable to wrestle and unwilling to take the job in creative offered him by the company, decided to move on to other things. I know a lot of internet fans, probably about 90% of them, hate Kevin Nash and are glad to hear this.
Yet another reason why I hesitate to call myself an internet fan sometimes.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Kev. Have been since the Diesel days. I was really looking forward to him finally coming back to WWE after his WCW contract officially expired. I wanted to finally see him work with Triple H, and with Shawn Michaels some more. I felt that he still could add to WWE TV, even if it wasn't with five-star matches. He's always had the personality and the humor. Yeah, he became "lazy" in WCW, but at that time the company was so piss-poor that anybody would've been lazy. WWE has always been different though. If used right, I thought Kevin would be able to have one last, great run in WWE before he retired.
Sad to say, he was not used right. Not in the least. Rather, he was used horribly from the beginning.
First, he debuted with the nWo, with Scott Hall and Hogan- the original nWo trio of terror from 1996. The debut of the nWo into WWE was built up in such a way as to make anybody think they would be making a major impact, recruiting new members left and right, similar to their WCW antics. Instead, the nWo quickly became second rate. Hogan left the group, Hall was released, Nash wasn't even given a match at Wrestlemania and was basically left in the shadows. Then his string of bad luck began, as he went out with a bicep tear not too long after Wrestlemania. Of course, at the time it seemed as though things were about to finally heat up for Big Kev, as he had begun wrestling Triple H at house shows and it seemed as though The Game would soon be involved in the nWo angle.
So Kev went out, came back, and WWE attempted to set up the Triple H/nWo storyline once more. Then, in his first match back, he tore his quadricep- the quadricep on the exact same leg, in the exact same way, as Triple H. So the Triple H/nWo angle was aborted. Instead, a feud began between Triple H and Shawn Michaels- not a bad substitute by any means; it's just a shame Kev had to get injured for HBK to return to the ring.
When Kev finished his rehab and came back from his quad tear- over eight months later- he finally began his feud with Triple H, with whom he had never worked during the Clique days of WWE ('95-'96). This was something I had been wanting to see for a long time, as I love both of these guys. I felt that they could've booked this to be so much better than it was. I've never been so disappointed in the turnout of a feud in my life. There was no buildup based on their past history together. Newer fans wouldn't even have known that these two were close friends, and were probably confused as hell when they hugged on Raw one night. Jim Ross gave us what, a two second explanation that Hunter and Kev were friends about eight years ago? Oh joy. They had a great opportunity to build off the Clique history and failed to do so. What could've been an emotionally charged feud based off their past friendship was turned into Raw after Raw of brawl after brawl. They never even cut any goddamn promos on each other. It was completely disgraceful and only proves just how little the current WWE booking crew knows about wrestling or any of the guys who were there before they were. I could've smoked ten pounds of crack and then booked a better feud for Hunter and Kev than these incompetents did. Absolutely pathetic.
The only thing I enjoyed about this feud other than the fact that I was seeing two of my faves together was the Hell in a Cell match. I just got the Badd Blood DVD for Christmas and got to see this match for the first time, and I will say that I think this match was badly underrated. The only thing that killed the match was the crowd, who sat on their hands. The feud was so poorly booked though that you can't even blame them for sitting on their hands. It's really sad, because in this match both guys worked their asses off.
What happened to Kev after his feud with Hunter came to an end? For awhile, not much. Basically he wallowed around for awhile with not a damn thing to do. The booking morons didn't even have any ideas for him. Hell, he was even kept off of some shows for awhile until this group of rocket scientists could come up with ideas. He had a barely-promoted feud with Jericho, got his hair chopped off, appeared in the Elimination Chamber match at Summerslam, got eliminated by Shawn Michaels, and was never seen again, and now he's officially gone.
The one area in which Kevin was misused the most had to be on the mic. Kev's biggest strength has always been his speaking ability. The man has one of the funniest senses of humor in the wrestling business. Go watch the two Diesel promos on the HBK DVD sometime and see just how good he is when it comes to promos; smooth, blunt, brutal, cool, and witty. Yet we never got to see that in WWE. The one exception to this was his Highlight Reel with Jericho. That segment was classic; WWE fans got to see some of the brilliant Nash humor and wit. However, it was only one time. Every other time he picked up the mic it was just to yell and scream at Triple H. It's sad that this is the Nash that newer WWE fans got to see. It could've been so much better.
My last big complaint about the misuse of Kevin Nash was the complete and utter lack of promotion he was given during his rehab and comeback after his quad tear. A 43 year-old man, busting his ass for almost nine months to return to the ring from an injury which a 33 year-old man struggled to come back from- and he got no credit whatsoever, no hype. At the same time. you couldn't go half an hour watching one WWE show without seeing some shit about Angle making his "HUUUUUUGE return" from his neck surgery after being away for a whopping SIX WEEKS. Let's compare that. Eight months away, to six weeks away, and who gets the promotion, the commercials, the music videos? It was a complete load of B.S. and only the most die-hard imbecile Angle mark would disagree.
That about wraps it up. His feuds weren't build properly, the booking team totally dropped the ball with him, he wasn't allowed to talk nearly enough, and all of his hard work rehabbing his injury went neglected. The Kevin Nash from 2002-2003 has got to be one of the most misused wrestlers ever. Now he's probably going to go to NWA-TNA, or Japan, and team with Hall for the umpteenth time, woohoo. Such a step down from WWE and what he could've been doing had he been used right.
Goodbye, Big Kev- hopefully you'll be able to come back to WWE for a REAL sendoff one day. You deserve better.