WWE's Missed Opportunity With Damien Sandow

WWE dropped the ball with Damien Sandow, one they will regret.

In late 2002, a 20-year-old indy wrestler named Aaron Stevens wrestled a series of dark matches for the WWE that appeared on the seldom watched Heat! television program. The company apparently felt very strong about what they saw out of the young man by quickly signing him to a development deal despite only having wrestled less than forty matches in his life. Stevens was quickly sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE’s developmental league at that time.

For the next five years the young man now named Idol Stevens honed his craft in the minors snatching up an OVW Television Championship, an OVW Tag Team Championship, and two OVW World Heavyweight Championships. Although very successful in OVW, Stevens was released by the company in August of 2007. His departure from WWE Developmental didn’t last long though as the company re-signed Stevens the following February. And in what would become a theme with WWE’s flip-flop handling of Stevens he was again released a year later and again re-signed about a year and a half after that.

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In 2010 Stevens, once again repackaged now as Damien Sandow found himself in WWE’s new developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling. He found more success there as well, capturing the FCW Tag Team Titles with Titus O’Neil, and also becoming FCW World Heavyweight Champion after defeating Seth Rollins. After dropping that belt to Richie Steamboat in January of 2012, Sandow was finally promoted to the main roster. And that’s when things started to go very wrong with the company’s handling of him.

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Sandow’s “Intellectual Savior Of The Masses” gimmick never really caught on. Although he was dynamite on the microphone and solid in the ring, he was essentially a re-boot of the 1989 failed gimmick, The Genius. Sandow, however, sold the character with everything that he had and his efforts were rewarded when he won the Money In The Bank briefcase at the namesakes pay per view in July of 2013. But just when it seemed that Sandow would get his big break, the company decided to waste the MITB briefcase cash-in by having him lose to Mr. Superman himself, John Cena and his injured arm cleanly on an episode of RAW.

It seemed to be all downhill then for Sandow as he began getting pinned clean on a regular basis by the likes of R-Truth and Goldust. Then from April to August of 2014 the WWE decided the best way to use the talented Sandow was to have him perform a series of impersonations that ranged from Bruce Springsteen, to Vince McMahon, to Paul Revere. All of these segments would almost always end with Sandow getting slapped around or knocked cold. Now as ridiculous as at that sounds, Sandow was almost always hysterical with this gimmick.

Then one day, out of the blue, Sandow began following The Miz to the ring as his stunt double. And once again, he took an absolute ridiculous gimmick and not only made it work, he excelled. His ringside shenanigans which included self-inflicted bumps and execution of wrestling moves to a non-existent opponent made the crowd go crazy. Miz would perform a move in the ring, zero applause, the now “Mizdow” would perform the same move on nobody, crowd explosion. There has never been a stronger difference in crowd reaction between two tag team partners during an entrance and the crowd had never been more excited for a Miz title win than when the duo captured the tag team titles at 2014 Survivor Series.

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The title reign, however, would not last long as the team dropped the belts to The Usos a month later. But that didn’t slightly diminish Sandow’s popularity, in fact, outside of Daniel Bryan at that time, he was as popular a superstar that WWE had. In what looked to be a smart move, the company decided to make Sandow’s popularity a source of contention between the two which led to a split. This seemed like a perfect opportunity for Sandow to feud with Miz, win the feud, and then go on to bigger and better things, right? Wrong. They wrestled one televised match on RAW that Miz won and less than a month later he was back to impersonating past superstars, this time as Macho Mando.

Now that brings us to this weekend and the news that Sandow has been released by the WWE. So why did this happen? Why would the WWE bury a guy the crowd loved so much? It could possibly be the same reason that Roman Reigns is your WWE World Heavyweight Champion. One word: stubbornness.

At some point along the line the brass decided that Sandow was no more than a side-show act capable of only humorous filler segments. Never in a million years did they believe he’d garner the popularity and fanfare that he did and in such felt zero obligation to honor the fans wishes. Sandow had a world of fan support behind him and instead of capitalizing on that, they trashed it. In fact, the week following his loss to Miz, Sandow came out to the ring to cut a promo and the crowd loved it.

How could the WWE see that and then suddenly team Sandow up with Axel on an impersonation gimmick? How does that make any sense in reality?

Now there’s no guarantee that Sandow would’ve had great success after a successful feud with The Miz, but wasn’t it worth a shot? The WWE Universe should be infuriated. The company took an extremely talented guy with a load of potential who the fans loved and basically looked right in everyone’s face and said, “We don’t care what you think.” It’s that same backward thinking that is driving the company’s ratings and fan base into the ground and alienating even their most avid, loyal fans.

Now if the WWE continues the pattern they’ve had with Sandow for past 14 years, there could be a shot that he comes back. However, at 35 years old that doesn’t seem too logical. And it’s a shame, Damien Sandow could’ve been a massive star for the WWE.

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WWE’s Missed Opportunity with Damien Sandow

By Tim Sherry | May 9, 2016

WWE dropped the ball with Damien Sandow, one they will regret.

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