10 Wrestlers Who Lost Their WWE Debut Match

Even though it’s only one of hundreds, if not potentially thousands of matches, there is significant importance placed on a wrestler’s debut.

This is especially true when it comes to televised debuts for major companies like WWE. With the world watching, the last thing a superstar wants to do is make a bad ‘first impression’. They would also (in an ideal world) emerge on the scene as a nascent hero and have their hand raised at the end.

I think we’ve firmly established that, at this point, the world is not perfect and debutants don’t always get going with glory.

These are 10 Wrestlers Who Lost Their WWE Debut Match.

10. Chris Jericho

Chris Jericho had an all-time WWE debut to remember.

Shockingly interrupting The Rock on the August 9, 1999 episode of Monday Night Raw, Y2J immediately established himself as a big deal by verbally sparring with The Great One.

That confrontation, however, didn’t set Jericho up for an in-ring showdown with the People’s Champion.

In fact, he didn’t make his in-ring debut until over two weeks later, when he battled Road Dogg on the August 26 episode of SmackDown.

The match itself was standard mid-card WWE TV fare from the era, with classic spots like Howard Finkel throwing a drink in Mr Dogg’s face.

That wasn’t enough for referee Tim White to call for the bell, but Jericho hitting his opponent with a powerbomb through a table was.

Though he technically lost his debut via disqualification, Chris by no means was booked to look ‘weak’, as he continued to punish his opponent with a post-match Walls of Jericho, only relinquishing the hold after the intervention of several WWE officials.

9. Daniel Bryan

Daniel Bryan performed in WWE rings long before showing up as a competitor on the original season of NXT the game show.

He wrestled various dark matches while under a developmental contract in the early 2000s and famously showed up as an enhancement talent on the weekend shows Velocity and Heat after he had been released.

When he returned in 2010, he did so as someone who had developed a reputation as one of the very best wrestlers in the world.

Of course, on NXT he was a ‘rookie’ being mentored by his ‘pro’, The Miz, a man who had significantly less squared circle experience than The American Dragon.

Bryan main evented the first episode of NXT, putting in a spirited performance against Chris Jericho, who was acting as the mentor of fellow NXT contestant (and eventual winner) Wade Barrett.

While something of a dream match to a certain section of the audience, it went just under six minutes and ended with D-Bry succumbing to the Walls of Jericho.

Bryan would continue his losing streak on NXT, failing to win a single match during his spell on the show.

8. Big E

Unlike Daniel Bryan, Big E was booked to look utterly dominant during his run in NXT.

In fairness, E’s NXT was the actual developmental territory, not the show where future prospects were made to look like jokes during absurd weekly challenges.

The former NXT Champion famously revived King Kong Bundy’s ‘five count’ gimmick, ensuring that his fallen foes would be pinned to the mat for an extra two seconds after being hit with the Big Ending.

Debuting on the main roster as the muscular back-up of Dolph Ziggler and AJ Lee, Big E’s first official WWE match was booked for WrestleMania 29. And it was a title match as Ziggler and Big E challenged Team Hell No for the WWE Tag Team Championships.

Despite taking place on the Grandest Stage of Them All, it wasn’t exactly a red-hot debut for the future WWE Champion. His team failed to walk away with the gold, too, when Ziggler was pinned following a Chokeslam and flying headbutt.

7. Dolph Ziegler

Dolph Ziggler (AKA Nic Nemeth) had a long and strange journey to get to his sweet spot as a versatile and respected utility player who is capable of having a decent match with anyone.

He actually won his first televised match as Kerwin White’s caddy on an episode of Heat in 2005, then lost his first match following a repackage as a member of the Spirit Squad on Raw about five months later.

After the cheerleaders were famously shipped back to OVW, Ziggler didn’t emerge for a couple of years.

He came back with a new alias and look in late 2008, competing under the Ziggler name for the first time on the December 1, 2008 episode of Raw.

Considering his opponent was established main-event megastar Batista, his odds weren’t great, but Dolph put in a decent effort and the two had a surprisingly competitive match for the three or so minutes it lasted. The Batista Bomb finish was a foregone conclusion, though.

6. Karrion Kross

Karrion Kross in NXT was presented as an absolute killer.

The two-time NXT Champion took no prisoners and tasted no defeat as he ran through everyone in the so-called developmental system. While still in possession of the title (during his second run with the belt), Kross made his main roster debut.

Facing off against Jeff Hardy on the July 19, 2021 episode of Raw, the assumption of most everyone watching was that Karrion would dismantle the Charismatic Enigma on the flagship show.

Things were ominous from the off, however, when Kross emerged for the contest without Scarlett by his side.

Less than two minutes later, he was looking at the lights after Jeff outfoxed him by using the ropes for leverage (following a powerbomb).

5. Randy Orton

Seemingly bred for the business and taking to it like an immature and insecure manchild takes to defiling a woman’s handbag, Randy Orton progressed at exceptional speed after reporting to WWE’s feeder farm, Ohio Valley Wrestling, in 2001.

Yet while most probably think his televised debut came after about a year of training in Louisville, Kentucky, that’s not actually the case.

The Legend Killer showed up on WWE TV long before he upset notorious rookie-welcomer Hardcore Holly on that episode of SmackDown.

Orton actually tangled with ‘The One’ Billy Gunn on the May 6, 2001, edition of Sunday Night Heat in what was his televised WWE debut.

Randy’s lineage was talked up on commentary and the rookie – playing the heel – showed promise in the way he moved about the ring and bumped for the established star in their short match.

It was a debut with very little thought or fanfare behind it, however, and Orton was really only there to do the favours for Gunn, who was in something of a limbo stage at the time.

When WWE tell Orton’s story, they tend to omit his long-forgotten loss here, but it happened, and no amount of RKOs out of nowhere or destroyed handbags are going to change that fact.

4. John Cena

Like Randy Orton, John Cena was a member of the fabled OVW class who ended up taking the sports entertainment world by storm.

Orton won the ‘debut’ that everyone remembers, as did Batista (in a tag match with D-Von against Orton and Mark Henry), while Brock Lesnar famously got the rocket strapped to him from the get-go and didn’t lose a televised match for over six months.

John Cena, on the other hand, was thrown straight to the wolves when he emerged as an unknown, answering Kurt Angle’s open challenge on the June 28, 2002 episode of SmackDown.

Far from the Face That Runs the Place or even the Doctor of Thuganomics, Cena was your standard cookie-cutter WWE talent. He was simply an ordinary trunks and boots wrestler who believed that he possessed enough RUTHLESS AGGRESSION to get one over on the Olympic Hero.

Spoiler: he didn’t. Though he gave a good account of himself and Angle helped make him momentarily look like a threat, the gold medallist inevitably got him down on the mat for a three count.

3. The Radicalz

The shocking arrival of the Radicalz on the January 31, 2000 edition of Monday Night Raw set up an intriguing show-long storyline for the following episode of SmackDown.

If the WCW defectors won two of their three matches against D-Generation X members on the night, they would earn WWE contracts.

Dean Malenko lost the first bout with X-Pac, immediately putting the pressure on Eddie Guerrero and Perry Saturn as they did battle with the New Age Outlaws.

Originally, Eddie and Perry had been booked to go over Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg, but an unfortunate incident during the match convinced WWE to rebook things on the fly.

Latino Heat badly dislocated his elbow on a Frog Splash and the decision was made then and there to have Gunn get the pin and end the match ASAP.

And with that, The Radicalz were already done as Chris Benoit headed into his match with WWE Champion Triple H.

Which the Rabid Wolverine also lost.

Naturally.

2. Charlotte Flair

These days, when Charlotte Flair wrestles it’s pretty much expected that she will emerge from the match victorious, so strongly has The Queen been pushed in recent years.

That wasn’t always the case, mind you, and Charlotte’s main roster run in fact got off to an inauspicious start.

Flair was the reigning NXT Women’s Champion when she made her Raw debut on December 8, 2014.

Her opponent was Natalya, a handy veteran more than capable of making Charlotte look good just three days before she was scheduled to defend her title against Sasha Banks at NXT TakeOver: R Evolution.

How peculiar, then, that Nattie got the W after just two minutes and thirty-four seconds, rolling Flair up as she went to apply the Figure Eight.

According to reports at the time, Triple H lobbied for the NXT star to win, but Vince made the call for Natalya to get the W instead.

The match also changed from a singles, to a tag, back to a singles match during the course of the day and Natalya herself lobbied to lose the match, though it was ultimately decided that nobody would remember Charlotte losing when she re-emerged further down the line.

1. Cody Rhodes

A young Cody Rhodes won all his non-televised outings (against the likes of Daivari, Carlito & Elijah Burke), prior to making his prime-time televised bow.

With his father Dusty watching on, the Grandson of a Plumber took on another generational talent – Randy Orton – on the July 16, 2007 episode of Raw.

Curiously, this bout was booked as much to debut Cody as it was to help build The Viper’s upcoming Bullrope Match with the American Dream at the Great American Bash pay-per-view.

The plucky underdog registered a very close near fall with a big missile dropkick off the top rope and genuinely looked like he could pull off the upset before Orton took control.

Once in charge, Randy never looked like letting the match slip away from him and an RKO ensured that Cody got his WWE career off to a losing start.

Not that the defeat did him much harm, of course, since he got to look like he belonged in the same ring as one of WWE’s standard-bearers. The American Nightmare would subsequently enjoy a nice little win streak, before running into a Hardcore Holly-shaped wall.