10 Wrestling Storylines That Vanished Without A Trace

Wrestling, unlike the vast majority of television programming, is never-ending

And whilst it's easy to criticise when it goes wrong, it sounds like a hell of a job to continuously come up with fresh and exciting storylines

However, when something doesn't land, as happens not infrequently, it's better to perhaps just move on entirely

As such, there are a lot of wrestling storylines that just don't go anywhere

With that in mind, I'm Sy for WhatCultureWrestling, and here are 10 wrestling storylines that vanished without a trace

Number 10, The Black Liquid. Supernatural wrestling can get away with a lot of truly nonsensical stuff for the very

same reason that horror films can. It asks you to suspend your disbelief, surrendering to the idea that there are things we may not

truly understand. And in fact we may not want to for the sake of entertainment, after all not knowing is

half of the chills. As part of the never-ending 2020 and 2021 feud between Randy Orton and the Firefly Funhouse

the viper found himself constantly harassed and tormented by Alexa I'm 29 but dressed

like a small child bliss. One of these moments saw your standard fare of turnbuckle pyro to frighten Orton but was

followed by the odd sight of him falling to his knees vomiting a strange black liquid

Calls of possession, courtesy of the then MIA Fiend, were heard from the portion of the

fanbase who tried to make sense of Supernatural Wrestling. But at WrestleMania 37 it was firmly established that the black goo was the domain of Alexa Bliss

As the match between Orton and the Fiend drew to a close, Bliss appeared from inside the box-like structure at ringside

Gone was her usual brightly coloured overalls. Instead, Bliss sat cross-legged in gothic wear, a crown around her head, covering her in the mysterious black secretion

This moment led to Bliss splitting Solo from Wyatt, but the black liquid, where it came from and what it represented, was never mentioned again

Which is weird, as the ability to force your opponents to choke on supernatural goo seems like quite a handy talent to have in wrestling

Oh well. Number 9, GTV. WWE loved jumping on a trend. Sometimes it works, and other times it's GTV

With the rise of reality TV and hidden camera shows in the late 90s

the company began to air superstars caught unaware backstage in grainy black and white CCTV-like vignettes

What started as rather b, candid moments of wrestlers picking their noses or stinging out the men's restrooms started to escalate

The hidden cameras caught meat cheating on Terry Runnels and the Mean Street posse faking injuries furthering storylines

The original plan was to have the culprit be Gold Dust, which was pretty clear from the get-go since they were originally marked as GDTV

This fit since the character would be used for a lot of seedy, perverse or boundary-pushing stories

and at that time was looking to return to air. However, when Dustin Runnels departed the company for WCW, it left WWE at an impasse

Famously, MTV comedian Tom Green, who you might know from Freddy Got Fingered or Road Trip

was considered, but Vince didn't like Green's style of humour. As such, they did what WWE always does when they can't think of an answer

They pointed in another direction to distract their audience and then brushed it under the rug

Number 8 Dusty Rhodes Kiss of Death It not just WWE that have had their fair share of stories that went nowhere In 1988 Jim Crockett Promotions started an angle that could have added an interesting element to perennial hero Dusty Rhodes if it hadn gone awry

On an unassuming airing of the show, Larry Zabisco's valet Babydoll hand-delivered Rhodes

a mysterious envelope, threatening the American dream with blackmail in exchange for a United

States title shot. To close things off, Babydoll took Dusty by the chin and pecked him on the

cheek. This was apparently meant to symbolise a kiss of death for Dusty's career. By some

stroke of hilarious irony, it was this kiss that allegedly brought down not Dusty Rhodes

but the angle instead. So the story goes, according to Zabisco, that Babydoll made the choice to kiss

Dusty on the cheek rather than the lips as originally pitched. Incensed by what they

viewed as insubordination, Crockett and Rhodes fired Babydoll on the spot. The valet tells it

differently, saying she was fired for a conflict of interest after her husband, fellow Crockett

star Sam Houston, got hired by WWE. Because of this, the story was dropped and it looked on screen

as though Zabisco had issued an empty threat. 7. I Still Remember

Do you remember I Still Remember? Considering how inconsequential it was, you'd be forgiven for forgetting

The November 2003 segment, which is less than a full minute long, starts with Booker T hanging out backstage with Heidenreich

reading slash advertising WWE's unscripted annual. However, it all takes a very odd turn when there's a knock at the door

which marks the arrival of an envelope for book. Unlike the contents of Dusty's, which was kept a secret

this one was shown to contain a piece of paper that simply read, I still remember

Was this a threat? Was someone from Booker's past coming back to haunt him? Was it a reference to better days

and someone was about to enter the former WCW champion's life in order to get him to the top of the WWE mountain

This may well be the most mysterious of the entries on this list because it's never really had any concrete answers about the plans either

Much like GTV, fans have long theorised that it was a way for Goldust to step back into a story with Booker T

after their legendary feud, but your guess is literally as good as anyone else's of course because by virtue of being on

this list there is no answer. These 59 seconds are all that exist of this angle

6. Who Attacked Hideo Itami? For the fans and clearly for head booker Triple H too it was an

exciting prospect to have indie star Kenta on the NXT books. Performing under the name Hideo Itami

the former pro wrestling Noah heavyweight champion wasted no time getting to work

teaming with fellow indie signee Finn Balor and even making an accelerated jump to Wrestlemania 31

with a featured appearance in that year's Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal

In May 2015, Atami was scheduled to take part in a triple threat number one contenders match

for the NXT Championship before he suffered a legitimate injury. Making the best of a bad situation

WWE attempted to turn the injury into its latest whodunit. Atami was found in the parking lot after being taken out by a mysterious attacker

This surely meant that when he returned, he would have a ready-made feud to slot into

The problem was that Atami was out for a full year and NXT moved fast

The man who made the most sense to be Itami's attacker, Kevin Owens, had moved up to the

main roster a long time ago. Other possible picks like Samoa Joe or even Balor were otherwise busy More than this WWE desire to do much with Itami seemed to have fizzled out which was made worse by another injury he suffered later the same year

Maybe Itami just tripped and fell. Yeah, that was probably it. Number 5, Lacey Evans' pregnancy

Very clearly a Vince McMahon story, because he seems to find the same roles for women over and over again in wrestling

Lacey Evans found a new old-school way to get under the skin of rival Charlotte Flair in 2021

At first, flirting with Charlotte's father Rick seemed like a playful use of her feminine wiles to further the feud

but on the February 15th episode of Raw, the storyline took a very weird turn

Teaming with Peyton Royce against Charlotte Flair and Asuka, Evans refused to tag into the match for reasons that became apparently clear when

midway through the bout, she backed away from the ring. The Southern Belle then shocked the world by announcing that she was pregnant

implying that Flair was the father as he belted out, Call Me Daddy

But later that night, after the show, it was confirmed that Evans was pregnant for real

in her personal life and would be taking time away from the ring. For some reason, WWE had decided to add it to her burgeoning story with Nate

without really thinking about where to go next with it. It was like the company figured this would generate great heat

for her future WrestleMania bout against Charlotte, which obviously didn't happen because Lacey was legitimately pregnant

Number 4. Samoa Joe is kidnapped by ninjas. In February 2009, Samoa Joe was abducted by ninjas

Wrestling is weird. In actuality, it's just a bunch of guys in black hoodies

but they somehow got the moniker of ninjas which makes the proposed story even weirder

This idea came out of nowhere, ending a random episode of TNA Impact with the former world champion being bundled into a white van and driven off into the night

Originally, Joe was apparently going to return as a psychopathic heel character

however TNA needed faces. As such, by the end of April, Joe had made a grand return to fill a gap

in the babyface Team Hogan against Team Flair, and thus this was never mentioned again

In 2021, writer Vince Russo attested that Bischoff's original plan was to have Jimmy Snooker of all people behind the strange attack, but it didn't pan out

Thus left with an unfinished story and a hole in their roster they chose to completely abandon it

Whilst TNA never went back to the well with the kidnapping, Joe himself made a cute reference to it in 2020 during his time on WWE commentary when he remarked

Ninjas can really ruin a night. Number 3, Vince's Lockbox. At WrestleMania 32, a post-streak Undertaker defeated Shane McMahon in a fairly forgettable match

propped up by a story about as watertight as a slice of Swiss cheese

If Shane returned to the WWE to blackmail Vince, why did he agree to compete in a match

Why did Vince think The Undertaker was his pawn, and so too, why did Taker go along with it

Worst of all, the most interesting wrinkle was totally passed over. Vince had not been the centre point of a WWE story for some time by 2016

As such, the mention of a mysterious lockbox, including apparently blackmail ready goods

was something that caught many fans' attention. The first and final mention of this MacGuffin came from Vince's mouth as part of his terms

for Shane If Shano beat The Undertaker he have control of Raw If he lost he would destroy the lockbox and its contents But by merely presenting the mystery box fans wanted to know what was inside of it It was a Chekhov gun of sorts and bizarrely considering that Shane lost

to Taker and still got what he wanted as a temporary general manager of Raw, for about three months

until the brand split, he did so without revealing the dirt he had on his father. What Vince might

be hiding was the most interesting part of the tale, so it's quite incredible that taken in the

full context of the story it looks more like an ad-lib that McMahon made up on the spot

Number two, the Nightmare Collective's hair collection. AEW's issues with booking a half

decent women's division have been the subject of much debate over the last few years but the truth

is they've always struggled. Nowhere is this more apparent in what may well be the worst storyline

they've ever put to television, not to mention the most confusing, in the Nightmare Collective

It was bad from the get-go experiencing the whiplash of Brandi Rhodes being the valet to her

husband and superface Cody Rhodes to suddenly going to her being apparently a cartoon bad guy

More than this, after aligning herself with Awesome Kong, Brandi began a weird obsession

with cutting clumps of hair out of their defeated opponents. There was no explanation for what this

was for, which made the indoctrination of fan plant Melanie Cruz painful to watch. There was

similarly no reaction to the debut of Luthor, filling the gap left by Awesome Kong departing

the company, and so AEW dropped the gimmick. Admittedly, one final note was supposed to wrap

this up when it was shown that Brandy had gone to therapy. But what about Luther and Mel? Did they

continue to lurk backstage at dynamite with clippers and pockets full of hair? And number one, the

attempted murders of Vince McMahon. One of the most infamous unfinished WWE storylines is Vince's

exploding limo. There's nothing more to the angle than that phrase. Vince stepped in his car and it's

engulfed in flames. Of course, this was all ignored in the wake of the Benoit tragedy in the following

days. But it's not the only time that Vince set up a story where someone seemed to want him dead

2008 Million Dollar Mania was a ratings grab that saw Vince dial phone numbers and promise cash to those that could give the correct phrase

Concept was a total car crash that resulted in some of the most uncomfortable television imaginable

The biggest highlight was Vince being rickrolled twice by a fan who then went on to win $20,000

What a great night for that person. All in all though it wasn't working and so Vince put an end to the idea by writing an event where the stage exploded and collapsed upon him

Perhaps most strangely of all, to hype up Vince's return to TV six months later

the January 19th 2009 episode of Raw opened with a video package

with footage of precisely what led to Vince missing TV, but it never truly went and told us why

Debatably, there was no angle. It was simply to allow Vince to end the million dollar failure

However, it was clearly set up to be a whodunit, but it vanished without a trace

And that's the list. Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below

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