McMahon looked for a shocking angle to renew his viewers’ faith. With Kevin Nash’s injury and X-Pac on a leave of absence due to backstage turmoil with management, Big Show was the only active wrestler still available in the NWO. McMahon, perhaps inspired by Russo’s proposal just weeks earlier, decided to abandon the NWO concept and go to the next obvious “capture past glory” angle.
Kevin Nash had surgery on his quadriceps muscle in his left leg on July 9 and won’t be ready to return to the ring for at least six months. He has expressed that he is not retiring, but plans to return to the ring after rehab. Jim Ross wrote in his WWE website update that Nash doesn’t want fans’ last memory of him to be his injury at Raw last week. He injury is similar to the one suffered by Triple H, more than ten years Nash’s junior, and it took Triple H seven months to return to the ring.
The Kevin Nash injury has drastically changed plans WWE had for this summer. Nash was scheduled to wrestle Triple H at SummerSlam in a co-main event (along with Vince McMahon vs. Hulk Hogan and Rock vs. Brock Lesnar). Had Nash not suffered the injury, he was supposed to destroy all four of his opponents with jackknifes and pin Booker T clean. Triple H was not slated to join the NWO until after SummerSlam, if at all. Now the NWO has been disbanded, and with Eric Bischoff’s arrival, all plans are up for change, other than Brock getting a title shot at SummerSlam.
Part of the reason for the dismantling of the NWO gimmick is the deteriorated relationship between X-Pac and management. X-Pac has been suffering a recurrence of some neck problems which were aggravated after a bump he took at a July 7 house show against Booker T. Even before that there had been instances where he was scheduled to do a job on Raw and each time, due to injury or persuasion, the plans were changed. As a result, he has earned a reputation of finding ways to get out of doing TV jobs on Raw. Brian Gewirtz, the Raw writer, has had problems with X-Pac in the past, so it’s possible X-Pac is concerned that Gewirtz is booking him in a demeaning way on purpose. X-Pac was taken off house shows this weekend and indications are his future with WWE might even be in doubt at this point. Were he to part ways with WWE, X-Pac could possibly work a full-time schedule between Japan and TNA.
THE END
