Kevin Nash Appreciation Thread

And they have tried to replicate this spot many times since and it never works cause it always feels forced. I think Kane's 2001 performance is the closest they came, but he was already a star at that point.

Well not sure I would be ready to talk about it this soon but props to him.

I am a huge Kevin Nash fan. I began watching as a kid in 1994 and Diesel was one of the characters that instantly drew me in. As a kid, I didn’t care or even realize that 1995 was a horrible year for wrestling; I was just completely entertained and invested in Diesel, Bret, Taker, ect…

As the years went on and Nash jumped back to WCW, I began to appreciate him as one of the best promos in the business. I always felt he was underrated in the ring, but hearing him on the mic each week really showed off his strengths (especially that now he could be himself rather than a Hogan-knock off).

Nash has always been in my personal top 10 favorites of all time. One of the best big men in the ring ever when he wanted to be (Bret also says this in his book), and great on the mic. A lot of fans may crap on him for not always going 100% in the ring in WCW, or for holding others down, but there’s no denying Nash had a great mind for the business and knew what was “in.”

Nash is criminally underrated. He was an old man by WWF standards when he got into the business. In the face of waning business, McMahon put the title on someone with barely more than a year of experience invested. (His WCW work may as well have amounted to indy matches since no one seemed to teach him and he was eating jobs.) Despite all of that inexperience, he developed his character, grew, and turned into something cool in one of the worst years of company history financially, only to become some kind of draw by 1996 with Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker, giving the company the best business it had in 6 years. Then he left.

Many with far greater experience would have cracked under that kind of pressure. Eddie Guerrero did. Nash didn't 

A lot of smarks whine about Nash all the time, thinking he was a talentless hack who never would have gotten over except by way of McMahon. So much of that comes from Jim Cornette. In reality, Nash would have been a huge star in any era. He's politically shrewd, funny, tall, had a great body, and sex appeal. Guys like that get over.  Despite the weird rose-colored glasses through which Cornette wants to see the NWA, it would have been totally within precedent for Nash to have been pushed. Look at Ernie Ladd. Special attractions drew. No, Nash would not have been the NWA Champion, but let's not pretend the NWA Championship was based on a meritocracy because it wasn't. It was given to heels to act as a traveling champion, which required a certain kind of worker able to take bumps for local acts. These belts are props. Somewhere along the way, NWA figures started to think that the belt was anything but that. The champions chosen were always based in politics, and they were hotshotting anyway by the late 70s. Nash would have been a huge act anywhere. Same with the Ultimate Warrior too. Warrior would have made killer dollars in Japan