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While WWE has often featured comedic characters throughout the company's history, Hornswoggle was regularly the worst part about the promotion during his run there.
Debuting in May 2006, Hornswoggle was initially paired with Finlay and acted as the Irishman's companion. Emerging from under the ring during the now 64-year-old's matches, he would attack Finlay's opponents and regularly help him win.
It was a fine enough role for him, but it was when WWE decided to start featuring him in much more prominent roles that things took a turn for the worst. Hornswoggle worked as a minor comedic character featured sporadically, and he should have never been pushed into the major storylines that he eventually went on to be involved in.
The over-exposure of the character was its downfall, and he went from being an entertaining star that drew laughs from audiences to groan-inducing whenever he would appear.
He Killed The Cruiserweight Division
After the success of WCW's cruiserweight division in the 1990s, WWE wanted their own piece of the pie and eventually adopted the division for themselves once Vince McMahon purchased his rivals.
The division was there to showcase the smaller stars on the roster, and feature the fast-paced action fans had grown to love during the Monday Night Wars, and it started off well enough. The likes of Rey Mysterio, Matt Hardy, and Billy Kidman wore the gold during its WWE run, but as the years went by, the promotion cared less and less about the title.
Aside from a lengthy Gregory Helms' reign with the belt, the title had lost all of its luster by 2007, and when Hornswoggle won the title in a six-man Cruiserweight Open match at The Great American Bash 2007, the championship (and division) were as good as destroyed. Having someone who had barely even wrestled in WWE, and had never been posed as a significant threat win the title was a damning indictment of just how the promotion viewed the cruiserweight division, and it was to the surprise of absolutely nobody that just two months after he won the belt, both the division and the championship were retired for almost 10 years.
He Shouldn't Have Been Vince McMahon's Illegitimate Son
Throughout the summer of 2007, the ongoing storyline of who Mr. McMahon's illegitimate son would turn out to be was one of the biggest and most intriguing in WWE.
Not only was the mystery surrounding the reveal enough to have fans extremely interested, but it was expected that whoever would be revealed as the boss' offspring would be in line for an incredible push going forward. That seemed to be the initial plan as well, with Mr. Kennedy apparently the original choice for the reveal, but after he had been suspended for failing WWE's Wellness Policy, they were forced to change strategy, and that they did.
Instead of the star-making role, the reveal was originally intended to be, it instead became a punchline when Hornswoggle was revealed to be McMahon's son. What followed was a comedy that got very few laughs from audiences, and fans were left severely disappointed after getting so invested in what could have been a great storyline. Hell, even with Kennedy suspended there were so many other options better suited for the reveal than Hornswoggle.
His Reveal As The Raw Anonymous General Managed Was Disappointing
If one disappointing reveal that killed a story wasn't enough, how about two? That's right, seemingly not learning from the mistakes they made several years earlier, WWE revealed that Hornswoggle had been the anonymous general manager that had terrorized the Raw roster for over a year.
Initially, the mystery had fans curious, with numerous catchphrases hinting that a WWE legend such as Stone Cold Steve Austin was the man behind the character, but after phasing the gimmick out in 2011, it was revealed one year later that Hornswoggle had been behind it all. What makes it worse is the fact that the reveal was initially suggested as a joke due to the poor reception the company got when Hornswoggle was revealed as McMahon's son but decided to go with it anyway knowing audiences all over the world were going to be disappointed with the outcome.
If that isn't a shining example of the company's seeming lack of interest in pleasing their own fans then nothing is. Hornswoggle started off alright, but by the end of his WWE run, he had become a channel changer and dragged anyone involved with the character down, even including DX when they were aligned with him for a short while.