The King Mabel Push Was One Of WWE's Worst Ideas

Mabel's King of the Ring victory made him one of the first wrestlers to adopt the new king name and persona after Randy Savage and Harley Race. WWE has made the tournament winner a king quite consistently now in recent memory, but it was a harder sell and lacked the organic nature of a fun wrestling act to help get Mabel over in the New Generation Era.Vince McMahon was still obsessed with the idea of monster heels and looked to build up Mabel as the next wrestler of that ilk. However, everything fell apart that summer, ending Mabel’s push before he could even get going. The elevation of Mabel as a king character led to an all-time flop in WWE’s history.

1995 Featured The Worst King Of The Ring

Longtime fans have a lot of nostalgia for the King of the Ring tournament since it usually created fun nights and crowned new major stars. 1995 and 1999 are considered to be the two worst years for the tournament that would go wasted. Mabel winning the King of the Ring tournament in 1995 was a shocking move when he turned heel.

RELATED: 8 Backstage Stories About Mabel Fans Should Know

WWE utilized Mabel in a tag team of Men on a Mission with Mo on the face side of things. The heel turn created a new character — playing the monster heel instead of a gentle giant and fan favorite. Mabel had no impressive performances and defeated Adam Bomb, The Undertaker, and Savio Vega to win the whole thing. WWE even gave Mabel a bye in the semi-finals after Kama and Shawn Michaels went to a draw.

Mabel winning a horrible tournament and getting a forced push out of nowhere was the worst combination possible. WWE believed the tournament alone would be enough to elevate Mabel into a bigger role after it worked for Owen Hart the previous year. Unfortunately, fans didn’t buy into him due to the tournament being arguably the worst in King of the Ring history.

Mabel Had A Reputation For Injuring Opponents

WWE moved forward with the King Mabel gimmick when he won the tournament and received a huge push. Mabel scored victories over The Undertaker since WWE loved to have the bigger heels working with him to get over. However, the negative reputation of being unsafe in the ring started to haunt Mabel and his push around this time.

Enhancement talents often got hurt after taking Mabel’s moves, but they never complained since they were there to get a job. The Undertaker suffering an orbital bone injury caused him to wear a mask for months. WWE lucked out that Undertaker had a cool Phantom of the Opera style mask made sense for his look, but the injury was a red flag against Mabel.

Kevin Nash revealed that he suffered injuries working a WWE Championship program with Mabel as Diesel. Vince McMahon was reportedly angry enough to consider firing Mabel after injuring Diesel, but Nash talked him out of it not wanting to cost someone their job. Mabel working with top names and injuring them made it clear that he wasn’t going to reach the top spot if that continued.

Mabel Dropped The Ball In Main Events

Even outside of the injuries, Mabel couldn’t step up to improve and have compelling matches in the main event scene. The WWE Championship feud of Mabel challenging Diesel gave WWE an all-time bad SummerSlam main event. WWE even turned Davey Boy Smith heel during the Mabel vs Diesel feud to add another player to the equation to care for Diesel’s next rivalry.

Mabel continued to struggle in his feud against The Undertaker afterward in between injuring him. Vince McMahon realized after about three months that all his plans for Mabel to become a main event heel were not going to work. Undertaker coming back from the injury saw him getting his win back over Mabel since WWE wanted him to win that feud.

Mabel's big main event push came to an end and reached the worst-case scenario when he was pulled off of television completely. WWE fired Mabel in early 1996 just a few months after the biggest push of his career. Many wrestlers will fail in a main event push, but most fall back into the mid-card or tag team picture. King Mabel was a concept that showed Vince trying to create steps to create a new top star, but it ended with his career taking a hit that he never truly recovered from.