Let's Talk About..........The Natural Born Thrillers

[King Kamala 0]

Alright, it's time for another edition of our weekly Let's Talk About thread...

 

 

I know a lot of you probably didn't watch WCW in the second half of the year 2000, but this was an incredibly interesting collection of raw talent. As a semi-mark at the time, I thought these guys would dominate wrestling for the next decade, in particular Sean O'Haire and Mike Sanders. WCW even did fairly decent job (by WCW standards at least) of pushing them as such. On the other hand, these guys were green as hell and they may have been given too much to soon.Then WWF bought out WCW and these guys went nowhere really. It says something when Chuck Palumbo is the most successful member of your stable.

 

And there haven't been many more guys, at least in this decade, with more wasted potential than Sean O'Haire. That guy had a good look, was agile for his size, and his short-lived Devil's Advocate character in WWE is one of my favorite of all time. But he never seemed to go anywhere. I thought for sure he'd have a Worlds title by now but instead he's fat and is doing MMA (rather poorly from what I hear).

 

What are your thoughts on this stable from WCW's dying days?

 

Edit: I realize I was one of a small group of WCW viewers in its dying days so if you're not familiar with the stable itself, feel free to talk about the members' success (or lack thereof) after the stable was disbanded.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

Just for clarification's sake the group consisted of Sean O'Haire, Chuck Palumbo, Mike Sanders, Shawn Stasiak, Reno, Mark Jindrak and Johnny the Bull right? I know that all were former Power Plant guys and most of them were picked up by WWF after the merger. Any other background info we need?

[King Kamala 0]

Yep, that's right Cheech. And Kevin Nash was sort of a member of the stable as their "Coach" before they kicked him out and he feuded with him.

 

 

They were around from IIRC September 2000 to February 2001.

 

 

I think that's all the basic background of the stable you need.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

Coach Nash was pretty much the forerunner for the Dr. Nash/PCS Bowl angle, so how could you not like the Thrillers? Not to mention Mike Sanders (who had a pretty huge following on whatever form this board was in back in the day) was pretty good on the mic and WCW was doing a half-decent job of pushing Sean O'Haire as the next big thing in a subtle sort of way. Didn't they feud with the Filthy Animals for a while? I guess I've forgotten a lot of the feuds they were in.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

Coach Nash was pretty much the forerunner for the Dr. Nash/PCS Bowl angle, so how could you not like the Thrillers? Not to mention Mike Sanders (who had a pretty huge following on whatever form this board was in back in the day) was pretty good on the mic and WCW was doing a half-decent job of pushing Sean O'Haire as the next big thing in a subtle sort of way. Didn't they feud with the Filthy Animals for a while? I guess I've forgotten a lot of the feuds they were in.

[cabbageboy 0]

Yeah I didn't really mind the group too bad. If WCW had tried something like this a year or so earlier it might have gotten over, but by mid 2000 it was really too late to turn things around.

 

I too thought Sean O'Haire would be a major star in wrestling, but he was never in favor politically in WWE.

[King Kamala 0]

The two major feuds they had were with The Filthy Animals and Paul Orndorff (who trained all of them except Shawn Stasiak IIRC) and with The Insiders (the short lived DDP-Kevin Nash tag team).

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I want to contribute to this thread but I can't for the life of me remember anything about this group other than who was in it. I remember Mike Sanders was decent on the mic and Palumbo/O'Haire/Jindrak looked the part of future superstars, but that's about it. On one hand, WCW needed to push guys like this earlier, but on the other, they were are greener than grass. They seemed bush league.

 

I do know that if Eric Bischoff has purchased WCW it was his plan to give Sean O'Haire the God push and eventually lock him up with Goldberg. Don't know if that would have worked out or not.

[Guest]

Would've worked if they had more time to make something stick. And if it wasn't in WCW.

 

They were super green, but then again, so were a lot of other young guys that have got the big push. Most of the guys that have been pushed to the level these guys were at worked out well, except for this particular group. Did I mention that WCW had a lot to do with that?

[King Kamala 0]

I agree with King. They were really green but no so much more so than Randy Orton was when he debuted in '02 or Rocky Maivia in '96.

 

I think what really hurt them was their one sided feud against The Insiders. It was just ludicrous that those two alone were able to beat an entire stable with relative ease. But then again it is WCW and it is Kevin Nash.

[cabbageboy 0]

It is interesting how WWE brought in guys who seem like the prototypes for the NBT group (Orton, Cena) and these guys became stars, while the actual NBT guys themselves were buried, jobbed out, put in gay gimmicks, etc. Orton in particular seems like someone who would have been right at home in this group.

 

Of course the obvious WWE guys who seemed like this sort of NBT type talent were Chris Masters and Carlito. Their late 2005 pushes reminded me a lot of that WCW era.

[The Buzz 0]

I liked the team of Stasiak and Palumbo. I thought O'Haire had a lot of potential, Sanders was pretty good on the microphone, and Reno was probably the one I liked most for his intensity in the ring.

[LooseCannon25 0]

Man, I remember when Palumbo and O'Haire destroyed Buff Bagwell and LEx Luger in one of the last PPVs. It was a total squash.

 

I thought O'Haire was gonna be a big time star. They wre pushing him hard towards the end, and then I thought the "Devils Advocate" gimmick with the awesome entrance music in the WWE was gonna push him over the top. Unfortunately not....and as someone said earlier he was fat and doing MMA.

 

Last I heard O'haire got a brutal ass-whoopin in a bar and may have permanent vision loss in one of his eyes. He's had a few facial surgeries.

[evilhomer 0]

The Palumbo/O'Haire tag team was great but it buried Stasiak and Jindrak, (personally I liked O'Haire with Jindrak over Palumbo). If I'm remembering it right, they broke up O'Haire/Jindrak and Palumbo/Stasiak by saying that they're taking the stars of those two teams to make a mega-team. Great for Chuck and Sean, but the other two looked like shit for being the lesser talents that were sinking their respective teams.

 

O'Haire looked to be in line for a major push with his Devil's Advocate gimmick, but all parties totally dropped the ball on it. It looked like a hit in the promos because he talked about some interesting subjects and the performance was excellent. Once it hit live though, O'Haire's timing and delivery were atrocious and production gave him horrible ideas to work with. All I remember was seeing him convince Kendrick to run around naked and I knew that was the end of that run.

[Timmy8271 0]

If I remember, Reno was billed as Vito's brother right? Or was he dating Vito's sister? Something along those lines.

 

I also seem to remember somehow Mike Sanders became WCW's GM.

[Hawkius Maximus 0]

The Natural Born Thrillers were a solid group. Not much can really be said. Out of all of them, Sean O'Haire had the most potential. He was capable of flying moves, power moves, and decent looking strikes. Had he went to Japan or somewhere after WCW was bought out, he could be a force right now.

 

Everything I've ever read, was WWE was in particular harsh with O'Haire out of all them, because it was known quite well that Eric Bischoff and WCW management considered him their guy. He was going to be the guy they pushed as hard as possible to try and take down WWE. That could not be forgiven. They buried him during the invasion, and then put him down in devs until he was broken of his style and his agility then brought up. He was not the same man, and they positioned him so he'd fail. The other guys didn't have that luggage, but on their own none of them were very good. Jindrak had exceptional agility and power like O'Haire, but lacked the intensity. Palumbo was just a big generic guy. Shawn Stasiak wasn't going to do anything in WCW, let alone WWE, and Mike Saunders was too small to get anywhere in WWE where as in WCW that wasn't so much a handicap. Reno was a complete non-factor.

 

It's funny, that out of all of them, it's Mark Jindrak that's became someone. His agility (Which WWE tried to break him of) and his power have been a huge hit in Mexico as Marco Corelone. Free of WWE and of the "WWE style", Jindrak lets it all go in the ring down there. Unlike O'Haire, who couldn't break WWE's change in his style, Jindrak has pretty much completely reverted. He's one of the biggest names, and draws in Mexico, which is fucking amazing.

[TheDevilAndGodAreRagingInsideMe 0]

What happened with O'Haire being this creepy devil's advocate type character? I checked out some of the short vignettes on Youtube and was wondering.

[Hawkius Maximus 0]

They paired him with Piper and let Piper do all the talking. They then gave him a kick as a finisher, which they'd programed him to not hit with any force.

 

Died a miserable death.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

What happened with O'Haire being this creepy devil's advocate type character? I checked out some of the short vignettes on Youtube and was wondering.

 

I believe the issue was that they gave him this great character and awesome vignettes to build it up but he just died in front of a live audience. He just couldn't convey the emotion of the character in front of the crowd and so the whole build-up was all for naught. They tried a few things with Piper and ultimately just ended up releasing him.

[strummer 0]

IIRC, he couldn't get through a live promo without laughing.

 

The only time I remember seeing the character used was when he convinced Dawn Marie to flash the crowd on Smackdown because she was "distraught" over Torrie being picked for Playboy over her. (edit: eh, it was either that or she was mad about not being chosen for the Girls Gone Wild PPV)

[Ravenbomb 0]

I guess the awesomeness of the promos was obtained through editing.

[DangerousDamon 0]

I remember watching Velocity and O Haire kicked the shit out of some jobber. It was one of the most entertaining squashes I've ever seen. "Look at the LOOK!"

 

I also remember Jindrak having the best Sub 5 minute match I've ever seen on Velocity with Doug Basham. If I find it, I'll try to post it in the YouTube Thread.

[cabbageboy 0]

It's utterly depressing at how much talent they got from WCW and flat out buried or released. The main problem is that while these guys were young talent, they weren't WWE's young talent. So they were all buried or fired unless they were related to someone (Chavo), too important to release (Booker), or found a lucky gimmick that got over (Hurricane).

 

There were guys like Kid Romeo that impressed me late in WCW, yet the guy was buried in development hell for a while and released. Jason Jett (EZ Money) was another guy that I thought was pretty good late in WCW, but I don't recall him even getting a chance.

[TheDevilAndGodAreRagingInsideMe 0]

I remember when Mike Sanders was the commissioner for a short while when they were changing commissioners on a weekly basis. There was more than one time I remember that the office of the commissioner had to be defended in a match. Sanders, The Cat, Russo, Nash, Lance Storm, and possibly others all held the position at one time or another during that summer if memory serves me at all.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I don't know...I think part of the problem was that late WCW had such a glut of young but virtually unknown talent. It would have been one thing if they had slowly introduced one or two of those guys at a time, instead, they shoved them all out on TV pretty much at once. By the end of WCW they had a ton of guys on TV with virtually no name recognition, other than a few appearances on Nitro. There was only so much WWF could have done with that many guys like that.

[King Kamala 0]

There were guys like Kid Romeo that impressed me late in WCW, yet the guy was buried in development hell for a while and released. Jason Jett (EZ Money) was another guy that I thought was pretty good late in WCW, but I don't recall him even getting a chance.

 

 

I thought I was the only Kid Romeo mark. I was a fan of his back when he was a Saturday Night regular in late '99/early '00. I marked out crazy when he showed up on Nitro once in March '00 even though he got squashed by The Wall or somebody of that ilk. Needless to say I was happy when he came back in early '01 and his team with Skipper got a push.

 

What surprises me about those two is not that they didn't get a push by WWF after WCW got bought out but the fact that those two didn't get a push anywhere after WCW was bought out. Romeo jobbed for TNA for a while in '03/'04 and EZ Money had a cup of coffee in TNA and ROH but they've both virtually disappeared since.

[King Kamala 0]

And it rocked, IIRC

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Was Romeo the one that was sort of doing a Rock parody for a while in WCW (like half of their roster)? That probably didn't help matters.

[King Kamala 0]

Ripping off The Rock didn't hurt Booker T or Juvie. Besides I can't recall Romeo ripping off The Rock. Maybe a bit during the WCW SN days but only six people watched that show then. He did sort of resemble him though.

[Lt. Al Giardello 0]

It pissed me off Mike Sanders never got a shot in the WWE... I always thought he'd atleast make a very good heel manger. In the dying days of WCW, he was very good on the mic. He had natural charisma.