The island of lost ideas...

[King Nothing]

I had grand designs for Antonio Cesaro GmbH. Grand designs. With Antonio Cesaro GmbH, I was going to eventually, if I managed to get them pushed to a singles title, have them defend it in the best manner possible (Spoiler: Not Really the Best). The gimmick would be that Antonio Cesaro GmbH is technically a separate entity from Claudio Castagnoli, Joe Hennig, and Chris Hero, meaning that when Antonio Cesaro GmbH won the X title, it would be defended by all the members. I wanted to eventually have a mid-match switch between Claudio and Hennig. Of course, I disappeared into the ether before I could make that a win.

Basically, I wish I could have done a corporate personhood gimmick better.

[suave]

Around late 2012, when I first joined, I had 3 ideas for a 2nd character to compliment Percy Watson.

One was Lance Action. He was intended originally to be a masked babyface, played by David Otunga, then Bo Dallas. I eventually made him a chickenshit heel played by Adam Mercer.

Another was Titus O'Neal, as a militant Malcom X black power type of character.

The third was Tyson Kidd as an annoying, moralistic heel. Think RTC era Stevie Richards.

[King Nothing]

So, in 2011, I had had the Highlight Reel (Derrick Bateman and Johnny Curtis) for a few months before the draft rolled around. During the draft, Derrick Bateman was drafted from NXT to Smackdown. I was asked whether I wanted the team reunited by M and I said no. Mostly because I just kind of rolled with it and created "The Noble Knight Johnny Curtis" and "Derrick Bateman, does not give a single iota of a shit."

Before the draft, Cutis and Bateman had been doing really well as a tag team, while Bateman was advancing in the Hardcore division by whit of being Taken, Johnny Curtis was tapping into my wealth of weird combat knowledge and putting together something of a cross between Let's Get Weird Johnny and a reenactor, with Derrick playing the straight man he was bouncing ideas off of. They would have continued along this vein until I got bored of the idea and changed things up in some way, probably by adding a new person to the dynamic.

Instead we got my favorite gimmick and the rule where "karmicknight only puts effort into feuding with Dolph Ziggler, for some reason." Derrick Bateman went from being the reasonable straight man into Darkwing Derrick, a madman who had no real advancement opportunities so he decided 'fuck it, I'll do what I want.' And Johnny turned into basically a reenactor who talked a lot.

[Deleted]

The All American Heroes was originally going to be Derrick Bateman, Jack Swagger, and Kaitlyn, with the promos being based off the Herman Cain presidential ad campaign, which I basically did with Sara and Joe in place of Kaitlyn and Swagger.

I probably was going to push Miz towards the IC Title again, while keeping up the part-time team with Ziggler.

Batista was going to finally debut at SummerSlam as DoucheTista, with Ariane as his latest conquest. Plan was to use him similarly to The Undertaker, Triple H, and Brock when Matt had him, and only use him sparingly, giving him angles that mattered and not just having him be one of the guys.

My original plan for Evan Bourne way back in 2009 was to make him a smug jackass who knew how good he was. Basically, he was gonna be Dolph Ziggler, yeah.

My original plan for Kenta was to have him in a string of squashes, then after he'd beaten three guys on the actual roster, he'd be involved in a six man tag with two random partners, which would've launched him into his first real angle and cemented him as a tweener character, who wasn't outright heelish, but too much on the edge to be considered a true face.

[Deleted]

So, I brought this up on BGO the other night, but it's time to talk about the failed idea that killed an entire brand.

In 2011, we swapped the three gimmick belts to different brands, with the Cruiserweight title going from Smackdown to Raw, the Hardcore Title from NXT to Smackdown, and the Women's Championship from Raw to NXT. I was getting the Women's title vacant, because Mickie James had won the title at WrestleMania and left the company as Champion. So it was very much a chance for me to shape the Women's division whatever way I wanted, and I had plans. Big plans.

During the draft, I set everything up for a fresh start, with most of the big names I got the year before being moved to either Raw or Smackdown, such as Randy Orton, Jinder Mahal, Edge, and Drew McIntyre. Had things gone the way I wanted, CM Punk would've been the only real life main event guy on the roster. But circumstances led to both Big Show and Chris Jericho ending up on the show, but that's minor.

When crafting the Women's Division, I used the same guidelines, as Beth Phoenix, Melina, Alicia Fox, and the TnT Bunnies were all on either Raw or Smackdown. However, there was one big name that ended up on NXT, although that was a request. What happened was, SnS requested all his characters switch shows. Morrison would go to Raw, Ziggler to Smackdown, and Maryse to NXT. But this request was made before WrestleMania. At the show, Morrison won the Cruiserweight Championship, complicating things slightly. SnS wanted Maryse to be drafted away from the Women's Championship, only for the title to now be coming to the same brand she was. But I was able to talk him into the idea and it seemed like the new women's division was a go.

On the first show, a tournament was announced, featuring Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Michelle McCool, Layla, Tamina, Eve Torres, Brie Bella, and AJ Lee. Maryse was livid about being kept out of the tournament, with GM Michael Cole's explanation being that Maryse had been a fixture in the title scene for two years, now it was someone else's turn. So the tournament progressed, with Layla and Tamina going to the finals. And at Backlash, the Cash in the Vault match would take place, featuring Kelly, Gail, McCool, Eve, Brie, AJ, and Ashley Valence. Again, Maryse was left out. Cole then made a third women's match for Backlash, Maryse vs. Raquel Guerrero, competing in her first match ever. And the winner was promised a special reward.

At Backlash, Maryse beat Raquel and the reward ended up being the right to referee the Women's Championship final. Eve surprisingly won the Cash in the Vault match(surprising because Tank had no intentions of her being seriously pushed), over the favorites, McCool, Kelly, and AJ. And Layla beat Tamina to win the Women's Championship, after Maryse fast-counted Tamina's shoulders down. Afterwards, Kharma made her debut and took both of them out, aligning with Maryse. From there, the plan was to have Tamina feud with Maryse for the rest of the spring and into the summer, then resume the issues with Layla. However, one big problem reared it's ugly head...

I sucked at writing for Tamina.

I could never find the right way to go with her promos and just couldn't figure out what I wanted her to be. So after trying to make things work, I mercy-killed the gimmick on the King of the Ring go-home show and took Zack Ryder and Gail Kim. But after that mess, I just lost my inspiration to continue GMing for a while. The Championship Challenge Series, which actually ended up being really good, was conceived because I just had no other ideas. So I just lumped almost all of the taken and tag-ruled guys and girls into a round robin so I could just take the summer off, so to speak. I wasn't expecting Gail Kim to end up being on the winning team or to win the Women's Championship. It just happened. But a lot of good stuff came out of it and I probably could've followed up after SummerSlam...

But I was tired. I'd been GMing since the beginning, nearly three years at that point. I needed a break. And Tank had the suggestion that we cut down the workload by just ending the brand all together, which many people were in favor of, so it was decided that NXT would end with Badd Blood. And the Women's Division, originally meant to be a focal point of the brand, with multiple matches per PPV and being on the same level as the male titles, had one match on the final show, a battle of the three top Divas, Gail Kim, Michelle McCool, and Maryse, with Gail walking out the winner.

But I do sometimes wonder what might have been if I hadn't gotten burnt out. Maybe we'd still have three brands, maybe the Women's Championship wouldn't be cross-branded, who knows?

[Deleted]

When I took over ECW in January of 2009, I had a few ideas heading into WrestleMania season.

One angle I started off the bat was Vickie Guerrero making Tommy Dreamer defend the Hardcore title weekly, but he lost in the first defense vs. Mike Knox. So then an angle was built where Dreamer would have to earn his rematch, since he was a suspect in the attempted murder of Vince McMahon. At the Rumble, Tommy won the Intercontinental Championship from Paul Burchill. I was going to use that to set up a unification match, but he dropped the belt to Ted DiBiase before that could get past the concept phase. But I still wanted Dreamer vs. Knox at WrestleMania and the original plan would've been a barbed wire match.

Looking on down the line, I had wanted the battle of the brands to be a 3-way tag, but that ended up not being in the cards. Had it happened as I'd have liked, Miz and Morrison would've represented ECW. But once it was clear that match was off the table, the back up plan involved the Chavo Guerrero angle. Chavo would've had his rebellion moment against Vickie, then joined up with Rey Mysterio to challenge for the ECW Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania.

That would've covered my two solo brand matches, then there's the cross-brand stuff.

For the reworked Battle For Brand Supremacy, Big Show would've been ECW's representative. My guess is Cena and Umaga would've still be in the match, so that would've been interesting. For Money in the Bank, Dolph Ziggler would've definitely been in it. My other guy? Hot rookie Sebastian Slater, had he signed with ECW instead of being buried at No Way Out...

Then the battle royal would've had pretty much everyone else not booked. I don't think much would've actually changed there, since the card we got still used everybody I'd used in this. And yes, the Hornswoggle/DH Smith vs. McIntyre/Gabriel match probably would've happened, too.

[Title Master Mikey]

Seeing as we're in WrestleMania season, I might as well throw out a few plans for my characters that got scrapped along the way.

For Dean, I had always intended to cash in around Survivor Series but my hopes for the WrestleMania main event were either to face Kaitlyn or a six person match with Dean, Kaitlyn, Dolph Ziggler, Ryan Nemeth, Damien Sandow and Brock Lesnar. Had one of those happened, it would have been inside Hell in a Cell as well.

For Generico, the very early plans would have been for Legendary to target the World Tag Team Championship before Spartan left. After that, Luci and I discussed the possibility of Breeze vs. Generico for the Pure Championship. I decided to pass as I'd like to lighten my load a little after Mania and that feud deserves a proper effort on my part rather than a half hearted one.

For Bryan, CH and I were going to finally do Bryan Danielson vs. The Undertaker. The build would be entirely based around Danielson's claims of having the new greatest undefeated streak at WrestleMania and him having no desire to face Taker now that the Deadman's streak was over. Undertaker would then put his career on the line in order to get Bryan to agree. Bryan would point out his connections to Shawn Michaels, Lance Cade and Seth Rollins who had all previously beaten Taker at Mania while Undertaker would point out how many people had tried to retire him over the years and had failed.

Had that been developed further, Undertaker would try to use his classic mind games on Bryan such as the sudden appearances via blackout, the casket and druids etc. None of it would effect Bryan though as he'd point out Taker's routine has been done to death. I think we had something planned out as to how Taker would eventually get in Bryan's head but I can't quite remember it right now.