The one thing that professional wrestling needs are matches that fans can believe in and buy into. When a world champion starts to take on a new contender, the fans need to buy into the fact that the challenger has a chance to win the title. If the challenger has no real chance, such as when Ricochet challenged Brock Lesnar in WWE, fans never buy into the match at all.
In WCW, one thing that the company did right was to make sure that the men who challenged for the world titles were people that fans believed in. Some don't like this, as Chris Jericho has been open about undercard guys getting a chance to move up and fight for the title, but if fans don't believe in the challengers, they won't care about the match. Here is a look at some rare WCW World Title contenders that no one felt had a chance, including some who shocked the world by winning the title.
10 Scott Hall
At Uncensored 1998, the WCW World Championship match saw Sting put his title on the line against Scott Hall. When the nWo was running all over WCW, Hall was positioned as either a tag team wrestler or mid-card champion.
He was never seen as a world champion, and at Uncensored, he wrestled Sting for the title but no one believed he had a chance. The match wasn't even the main event, playing second fiddle to Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage. Sting won in eight minutes, and the result was never in question.
9 Diamond Dallas Page
There are a few entries here that have a man that none of the fans believed could win, but somehow pulled out the big win and became the new WCW World Champion. At Spring Stampede 1999, Diamond Dallas Page was significantly over with the fans, but he was in a four-corners match against champion Ric Flair and challengers Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage.
With three former world champions in the match, it was DDP that shocked the world and won his first WCW world title. This pushed Page into the main event.
8 Chris Benoit
By 2000, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn all wanted to leave WCW because they knew they were never going to get a chance to work in the main event.
At Souled Out 2000, the WCW Championship was vacant, and Benoit took on Sid Vicious for the title. No one expected Benoit to beat the giant Sid, but he did and won. Benoit quit anyway and left for WWE as the WCW World Champion.
7 Davey Boy Smith
In 1993, Davey Boy Smith was in WCW. He was one of the top stars in WWE for years, but he capped out at the Intercontinental Championship. By the time he went to WCW in 1993, he was not quite up to the same level as the year before when he battled his brother-in-law Bret Hart for the IC Title at Wembley Stadium.
Davey Boy came in, positioned as a star. He ended up in the main event of Slamboree 1993, and he was challenging Big Van Vader. There were two World Title matches on the show, one with Barry Windham defending his title against Arn Anderson and the other with Vader against Davey Boy. The match ended with Smith winning by DQ.
6 Curt Hennig
At Bash at the Beach 1998, Bill Goldberg came in as the WCW World Champion. The biggest problem with Goldberg as a champion was shown in this match, as no one was believable against the monster.
The match wasn't even the main event of the show, as Hulk Hogan and Dennis Rodman fought Diamond Dallas Page and Karl Malone. In the World Title match, no one expected Curt Hennig to win against Goldberg, and he lost in four minutes.
5 The Barbarian
In 1992, WCW was struggling mightily in the booking. The main event of Halloween Havoc 1992 was a Coal Miner's Glove match between Sting and the debuting Jake "The Snake" Roberts, which also marked the end up Roberts' hopes in WCW.
The WCW World Championship saw Ron Simmons as the champion, and he put the title on the line against The Barbarian. While Barbarian was always a dangerous wrestler, no one believed he would ever get a world title run and knew he would lose here.
4 Vince Russo
In WWE, Vince McMahon won the WWE World Championship and was not only a non-wrestler as the champion but also the oldest man to hold the title. Around the same time, Vince Russo had left WWE and started working with WCW, and he also ended up winning the top title as well.
On Monday Nitro, on Sept. 25, 2000, Vince Russo booked himself in a steel cage match for the championship against Booker T. No one expected him to win, and a bunch of people interfered in the match. It ended with Goldberg spearing Russo out of the cage, so Russo won the WCW World Title. Thankfully, he gave up the gold quickly.
3 Road Warrior Animal
No one in the world expected Road Warrior Animal to win his first world championship in 2001. Over a decade before this, Road Warrior Hawk had people believing he could beat Ric Flair for the title, but when it came to Animal in 2001, no one thought he had a chance.
However, he was added to the world title match at Sin 2001, where he was part of the Four Corners Match against champion Scott Steiner and contenders Jeff Jarrett and Sid Vicious.
2 Brutus Beefcake
In 1994, Hulk Hogan did a favor for one of his best friends. At Starrcade, the biggest WCW PPV of the year, Hulk Hogan defended his world championship against The Butcher, which was one of the countless gimmicks that Brutus Beefcake played in his career.
The most critical PPV for WCW in 1994 had Hulk Hogan in the main event defending his title against Brutus Beefcake, and no one believed he had a chance, for good reasons.
1 David Arquette
Actor David Arquette showed up in WCW in 2000 for one purpose. He was there to promote his professional wrestling comedy movie Ready to Rumble, and WCW took his arrival one step further. WCW brought him into the storylines and worked his way into a confrontation with the New Blood.
Soon, he was put into a match where he teamed with Diamond Dallas Page against Jeff Jarrett and Eric Bischoff, where Arquette took the pinfall win and became the new WCW World Champion.