by Bob Morris

There’s been so many wrestlers in this business that were thought by some to be destined for greatness…but for one reason or another, things never panned out. 

These were the wrestlers that showed much promise with ringwork, were really over with the fans, or just seemed to have that certain something about them that brought the words “future star” to mind. Yet something happened…be it a problem with the wrestler, the promotion, the booking, or some combination of factors…that prevented that wrestler from achieving greatness. 

These wrestlers will be the focus of a series of articles I will be doing over the coming months. And I figure it would be good to start with a wrestler who is probably familiar to most of you: Brian Adams. 

While Adams may have found his calling as one-half of the tag team Kronik, it could have been so much more for him back in the WWF many years ago. Plus, he was a better worker than he was today, but a certain factor outside the wrestling world significantly impacted his wrestling career. 

But before we get to that, let’s give you a little background on Adams as he stared out… 

Demolition was on its third run as the WWF tag team champions, but the team was noticeably growing stale. On top of that, the WWF had positioned the babyface Hart Foundation as the top challengers for the titles. Obviously, a heel turn for Demolition was necessary…and because Ax (Bill Eadie) was having heart problems, somebody else was needed to fill in for him during matches. 

The WWF’s solution: Demoltion would add a third member to its ranks, with speculation that Demolition brought in the third member because they feared the challenge coming from the Hart Foundation. And so, Brian Adams began his WWF career as Crush. 

Crush was originally packaged just like the Demolition members with the black leather, spikes, and face paint, and he worked a match style just like Ax and Smash (Barry Darsow) did. Adams’ only problem was he was green and fans didn’t particularly buy into him as a new member of Demolition. 

The WWF went with the gimmick that Ax would switch places with either Smash or Crush at an opportune time to try to build heat, and the signing of the Legion of Doom, who immediately claimed Demoltion was “imposters” of the LOD (something that a lot of smart fans believed as well) appeared to have potential, but it still didn’t help. Demolition dropped the tag team belts to the Hart Foundation at SummerSlam ’91 and spent time putting over the LOD at house shows. This pattern continued in six-man matches, where the three Demolition members faced LOD and the Ultimate Warrior. 

When it became apparent Eadie’s health problems weren’t going to get better, the WWF released him and came up with the storyline that Demolition was ordered to be reduced to two members again. Mr. Fuji became the team’s manager again, but it was too late…the magic was gone. As a result, Demolition jobbed to Japanese wrestlers Genichiro Tenryu and Koji Kitao at Wrestlemania VII, Crush departed, and Smash stuck around in the singles ranks, before being repackaged as Repo Man. 

During his time away from the WWF, Adams worked for Don Owen’s PNW promotion in Portland, continuing to use the Crush name and pushed as a babyface for much of his stint. This allowed Adams the chance to improve his workrate and carve his own identity without being hindered by the Demolition gimmick. This continued until, about a year later after his WWF departure, Vince McMahon decided to give Adams another chance. 

Vignettes were then filmed to showcase the newly-repackaged Crush. He wore neon-colored tights and was shown in a junkyard, talking about how he liked to “crush things.” Then they would air so-called home videos of Crush as a kid, where he crushed a baseball with his bare hands. Contrived stuff, no? 

Well, despite the silliness of the vignettes, Crush managed to get over with the WWF fanbase for a simple reason: He was a badass who, while a nice guy outside the ring, would just destroy his opponents inside the ring. He even had a finisher to emphasize the “Crush” aspect, where he would grab his opponent with both hands around his head, lift the guy up by the head, and drop him to the mat, squeezing the opponent’s head until he submitted. Yet even with the silly finisher, Crush’s character caught on rapidly with the WWF fanbase. To top it off, Adams, back then, didn’t suck in the ring…in fact, he was quite the talent, being able to pull off power moves with ease, but also showing tremendous agility with a great dropkick and even a top-rope move on occasion. And, as many smarts will gladly point out to you, Crush had some of the best entrance music created for a WWF wrestler at the time. 

At SummerSlam ’92, Crush was booked to face his former tag team partner, Repo Man. Of course, the WWF never played up the past of Adams and Darsow in Demolition, but it was still rather ironic that Crush’s PPV debut as a singles wrestler was against a man he once teamed with. Anyway, Crush soundly defeated Repo Man, getting a pretty good response from the crowd in the process. The WWF knew they had a hot property on their hands, but the problem was they didn’t have any heels to position him against. Guys like Razor Ramon, Rick Martel and Shawn Michaels were either in other feuds or being groomed for them. So it took the WWF a while before the company found a heel for Crush to feud with. 

And the story behind the heel is pretty interesting in itself…let’s go over that briefly, and that will bring us back to Crush. 

Matt Borne, coming off an embarrassing stint as Big Josh in WCW, had been signed by the WWF, and they stuck him in a clown suit. Borne’s duties: He wandered around the stands during show tapings, watching the matches on occasion, impressed with what the wrestlers did in the ring. So you could say Vince McMahon had actually turned the WWF into a circus for real, right? 

But Vince had bigger plans in mind. He started having the clown, now dubbed “Doink,” playing practical jokes on the wrestlers. This continued until Doink encountered Crush on a Superstars taping, playing a joke on him. Crush brushed it off, but when Doink turned his attentions to some kids in the stands, Crush angrily confronted Doink about it. 

The next week on Superstars, Doink approached Crush, arm in a sling and a flower in his hand, saying he was sorry. Crush accepted the gesture, but then Doink revealed he was faking the injury, and what was in his sling was a wooden prosthesis (or in other words, a fake arm) and he attacked Crush from behind, beating him severely with the wooden arm, and Crush had to be taken back to the locker room on a stretcher. 

This sadistic attack, coupled with Borne’s tremendous ability to change facial expressions at the blink of an eye, got Doink the evil clown over as a heel. And to go along with Borne’s over-the-top performance with the evil clown character, he was a great mat wrestler and impressed fans with his work. A match between Doink and Crush was signed for Wrestlemania IX. 

Obviously, two endings to that match make sense to you, right? Either have Crush dispose of Doink the evil clown and move on triumphantly to other things, or have Doink again perpetrate a sadistic beatdown to get even more over as a heel, right? 

Of course the WWF didn’t do it that way. Instead, they had Steve Keirn (coming off a forgettable stint as Skinner, the Florida Everglades alligator hunter) dress up in the Doink outfit as well, and thus the infamous “double Doink” ending was booked, where Keirn (the second Doink) came out to attack Crush and allowed the original Doink (Borne) to get the win. They even had another referee come out from the back and look under the ring, but he saw nothing! The explanation from Doink: It was “all an illusion.” 

The WWF’s decision to be cute with the Doink character, instead of keeping him as a sadistic heel, hurt both Doink and Crush, as both wandered about in the midcard for some time. Crush was given an Intercontinental title match at ’93 KOTR against Shawn Micheals, but the two Doinks distracted him and Crush lost. 

Still, many smarts were expecting that Crush would get to be the man who would bodyslam Yokozuna in the Stars N’ Stripes Challenge, and then be pushed as the “next Hulk Hogan.” However, it didn’t happen that way…Crush was allowed to lift Yoko off his feet, but not actually slam him, and the face turned Lex Luger was chosen to be the one to slam Yoko and challenge for the WWF World title. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Luger story, so let’s get back to Crush. 

With Luger having turned face, and plans in progress to turn Doink face as well (after all, he was getting some babyface pops because they never gave Crush a true blowoff win over the evil clown), the WWF was short on heels, and Vince McMahon decided to turn Crush heel to make up for that. 

So they played up a friendship between Crush and Randy Savage (who was primarily serving as a color commentator at the time) and in a match between Crush and Yoko for the World title on a Raw episode in the summer of ‘93, Yoko not only won the match, but delivered four Banzai splashes after the match. Wrestlers from the back tried to stop Yoko but were tossed out by the WWF champion, as Savage could only sit by on commentary and watch, having been warned by president Jack Tunney not to get involved in matches while serving as a commentator. However, Savage could only take so much and left his position at the broadcast table to pull Crush out of the ring and prevent further damage. 

Then the WWF played up a storyline that Crush was upset that Savage didn’t visit him while he was at the hospital. And one night, when Crush was scheduled to return to Raw to talk to Savage, he brought out Mr. Fuji with him and accused Savage of not helping him out in his match with Yoko because Savage saw Crush as a threat to him and wanted him out of the WWF. Savage confronted Crush and pled his case, and it appeared Crush had listened to Savage and changed his mind about things. But as the two went back to the locker room to talk, Crush instead attacked Savage from behind, dropped him throat-first across the guardrail, then tossed him into the ring, where Yoko, now Crush’s ally, came in and Banzai splashed Savage. 

While the heel turn was initially effective, it was limited by the fact that most people perceived Crush as a lackey for the WWF champion. This was further embedded in people’s minds when at Survivor Series ‘93, he teamed with Yokozuna during one of the matches, and then at the Royal Rumble ‘94, when he was the first man to enter the ring to help Yoko in his casket match. As a result, it affected Crush’s heat. Crush ended up jobbing to Randy Savage in a falls count anywhere match at Wrestlemania X, then worked a midcard program with Lex Luger that went nowhere. 

And then, a mistake on Adams’ part happened that effectively derailed his wrestling career for years. 

In early 1995, Adams was arrested by federal officials for illegally transporting weapons into Hawaii. The WWF, having just come off the steroid trial and not wanting to have somebody with such charges working for them, fired Adams on the spot, and he wasn’t heard from in the wrestling world for some time. Adams pleaded no contest to the charges and received probation, thus avoiding a prison term. 

And since that time, his career never was the same. A thumbnail review of his career after that showed as much: 

* In late 1996, the WWF brought him back as Crush, giving him a convict-type gimmick as a joke to the smarts who knew about the charges filed against Adams, even if he never served any time in prison. One of the noticeable things about Crush at this time was he was very much out-of-shape and he was sloppy in the ring. He was later paired with Faarooq and Savio Vega as the original Nation of Domination, but never got over in that stint.

* In mid-1997, after the break-up of the original Nation of Domination, Crush formed a biker-boy group with Brian Lee (Chainz) and Ron and Don Harris (Skull and 8-Ball), thus kicking off the much-maligned WWF Gang Wars. On a side note, Crush’s group, the Disciples of Apocalypse, was actually over with the fans, but the bad matches that were part of the Gang Wars, and the fact Crush’s group did most of the jobs, killed all that heat.

* Late in 1997, Crush was injured in an angle where Kane attacked him, and between Adams being upset over how the injury occurred and also angry about the Bret Hart Montreal situation, the WWF released him.

* In early 1998, Adams debuted in WCW, immediately being put into the nWo, and then doing nothing of note from there.

* Late in 1999, after the nWo had been disbanded, Adams was re-packaged as the KISS Demon, and was positioned for a feud with Vampiro (the one that was supposedly going to involve the “holy water” and I hope I don’t have to go over that for you), but two weeks into the feud, Eric Bischoff was removed as WCW president and officials decided the KISS Demon deal was off. Adams was later released, and WCW only brought back the Demon after KISS members reminded WCW that the company was obligated to stick with the deal, resulting in Dale Torborg being given the Demon gimmick. 

And of course, Adams eventually returned to WCW, pairing up with Bryan Clarke to form the tag team of Kronik. Still, looking back on Adams’ career, he could have done so much more than that. 

It still boggles my mind that the WWF chose the Luger route instead of the Crush route in the quest to find the next Hulk Hogan. But then again, Adams’ brush with the law also did plenty to damage his career, so maybe the WWF was smart not to go that route after all. 

Still, it makes you wonder how things might have been like in the WWF, with Brian Adams parading around in 1993 with the company’s World title.