By now you've heard that WWE has released 8 of their on-screen employees yesterday, including Wade Barrett, Cameron, and Alex Riley. However, the one that hit a lot of people the hardest was the release of Damien Sandow, who had just recently began appearing on television again. This brings an end to his third run with the company, spanning from 2010 to 2016. While he might not be the worst booked wrestler in WWE history (I can name quite a few others who could fit that bill), but he could easily be described as the most misused wrestler of the 2010s.
The Rise and Fall
Let's start with when the horrible booking really started. Money in the Bank 2013: Damien Sandow ends up winning the World Heavyweight Championship Money in the Bank briefcase, giving him a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship whenever he wanted. You'd think this would be the beginning of a main event push for the Intellectual Savior of the Masses. Yeah, you'd think that. Right after Money in the Bank, he and Cody Rhodes split up their tag team, Team Rhodes Scholars, and began a feud due to Sandow pushing Rhodes off the ladder to win the briefcase. Rhodes absolutely dominated the feud, which included throwing Sandow's briefcase into the Gulf of Mexico, and beat him in the two singles matches they had. In fact, Sandow did a lot of losing after he won Money in the Bank, going 1-12 in his matches on RAW and SmackDown. How does that make him look credible at all? Why would you give this guy the briefcase and have him loss all the time. Well, he might have been losing then, but he'd be booked strong when he was about to win the World Heavyweight Championship, right? Well...
On the RAW after Hell in a Cell, Sandow confronted the new World Heavyweight Champion John Cena, attacking him and hitting his recently injured arm with a chair before cashing in his briefcase. With Cena working on basically one arm, Sandow lost. Even with one arm, Cena pinned Sandow clean in the ring with no interference whatsoever. If you've ever wondered why people don't like John Cena, it's matches like these. This loss made Sandow the second person to unsuccessfully cash in Money in the Bank, the other being Cena himself. Even worse, Sandow is the first and only wrestler to lose the cash in match, with Cena winning his match by disqualification. It was one of the worst outright on air burials I've ever seen. But hey, he had a good match with Cena and proved he could toe-to-toe with one of the best wrestlers WWE has, that must've done something for him right? Nope.
After losing to Cena, Sandow's career spiraled into jobber oblivion, which included being the first man eliminated in the 2014 Royal Rumble and losing to Sin Cara in a minute long match. They took this guy from what should of been a main event push and made him the lowest of the low. And it only got worse from there
The Imitation Game
On the April 28th, 2014 episode of RAW, Sandow interrupted a segment between Dolph Ziggler and the night's celebrity guest Hugh Jackman...dressed as Magento from X-Men. This guy was Mr. Money in the Bank less than a year ago at the time, just in case you forgot. He tried to use telekinesis to take Jackman's microphone from him, only to receive a punch from Jackman and a Zig Zag from Ziggler. Two weeks later, Sandow cut an odd, almost shoot-like promo when he interrupted the RAW pre-show, saying things like:
"I heard you can be on this show and not wear a superhero costume"
"After this little stint, I'll probably end up teaming with Yoshi Tatsu and never get a microphone again, so we're going to make this count"
And after they cut off his microphone "Why would they kill my microphone, I have no idea, do you think they're afraid?
Even weirder, they never go anywhere with this. It was so bizarre. So despite cutting that promo, Sandow continued to do impersonations for months, impersonating the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Paul Revere, and even Vince McMahon. While some of the impersonations were pretty funny (McMahon in particular), it was still awful to see someone with so much talent be regulated to being a comedic jobber. However, he would end up striking gold with one impersonation in particular.
A Star is Born
Sometime in August, The Miz began a feud with Dolph Ziggler, and brought Sandow into the feud as his stunt double, having him wrestle matches and take bumps for him. Later, this expanded into copying everything Miz did at ringside. This was only supposed to be a one-off thing as part of Sandow's impersonation gimmick, but it caught on, and they kept doing it. Thanks to his dedication to the gimmick and working as hard as he can to entertain the crowd, Sandow (now Mizdow) became a huge hit with the crowd, chanting "WE WANT MIZDOW" throughout the entirety of his and Miz's matches. Sandow was a star, and after he and Miz split up at WrestleMania 31, it looked like Sandow was finally going to be pushed as the singles star he deserved to be. At WrestleMania 31, Mizdow and Miz were two of the final three in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal along with Big Show, and after Miz told Mizdow to go fight Big Show for him, Mizdow had enough and eliminated Miz. Even though he didn't win the match, he was free now and ready to start his singles career.
It All Falls Down
The next night on RAW, it was Mizdow vs Stardust. Yeah, even though he had split from Miz the night before and was now free to be his own person, he was still doing the Mizdow gimmick. This led the natural feud of Miz vs Sandow, except it was Miz vs Mizdow. Why would he keep impersonating him when he had split from him? It made no sense. Even worse their feud was booked poorly, with the two having a match with the rights to the Miz brand on the line on an episode of RAW. They didn't even get a pay-per-view match, the blowoff was on free TV. What should have been the beginning of a great singles run for Sandow ended up revolving around him actively trying to be someone else. And it didn't stop there.
After losing the Mizdow gimmick in his match with The Miz, Sandow began wrestling as Sandow again, but within two months he was back to impersonating other people, imitating the Macho Man Randy Savage to work off of Curtis Axel's "Axelmania" gimmick. This resulted in the two becoming the The Meta Powers, a parody of the Mega Powers. It was so disappointing to see Sandow dropped back down to doing comedic impersonations rather than being a serious competitor. After the Hulk Hogan racism scandal, The Meta Powers were dropped. This should have been the moment that Sandow finally got the chance to have a good singles run. He never got it. He infrequently appeared on TV before yesterday when he got released.
And Now We're Here
And that's the end of the Damien Sandow story for now. There were so many opportunities to push this guy to be a star, or at least a solid midcarder. But WWE wasted his potential and gave him terrible impersonations to do instead. He was a good worker, great on the mic, and managed to get the crowd behind him with zero help from creative or anyone backstage. Even when he would make those infrequent appearances on RAW and SmackDown, he would still get a huge pop from the crowd. That's how much we all liked him. The guy even trended on Twitter after he got released, so much so that he was a top 5 trend in the United States. How ironic is it that the guy who got himself over with the fans got fired, but a guy who can't get over with the fans no matter what anyone does gets to be WWE Champion. I say it's the end of his story in WWE "for now" because I hope one day, he comes back and WWE uses him. But until then, we can only hope.
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