Rick Rude: What more is there to say? The guy worked so damn hard and they did nothing with him in the long run
Did nothing? ...The guy was a former IC champ from the days when that belt was HUGE and main evented for the WWF title vs Warrior a bunch of times.
I can't recall him ever getting a run against Hogan though, which indeed does suck.
Ted Dibiase: He should have gone to the Main Event circle, but I guess Hogan had other plans (or so it's rumored)
Never read anything about Hogan preventing DiBiase winning the belt... The commonly held belief is that Honky Tonk man (who was on a hand-shake only "no major jobs on TV" deal at the time) refused to drop the IC belt to Savage on SNME in '87 so they ended up putting the WWF title on him at WM4 (when the original plan
was to put it on The Million Dollar Man).
Sadly his back injury put paid to that, otherwise, following his 'retirement' of Flair, I'm pretty sure we'd have seen him climb the ranks along with Bret & HBK.
Didn't like him anywhere near as much as a face tho'...
@ Enzo: Any thought what could have been done with Owen...
Thought about this before and I'll be honest, the idea of him fueding with Vince rather than Austin doesn't quite scream ratings to me. Always found Owen to be a bit of anomaly... His demeanour always came across a bit 'wet' & 'geeky' to me and because of this I've never been able to picture him a world champ (Especially not in THAT era).
Good call re: RVD at that time.... He was by far the best thing about the Invasion storyline, was having some of the best matches I've seen from him in WWE and should have been a breakout star off the back of that angle and in the mix for the undisputed title mini-tournament.