After looking at one of the old posts on Wrestlers you liked but everyone else didn't and it reminded me of the late Andrew Martin aka Test and it reminded me of the days of him in the WWE.

I always thought he was a pretty good big man who never really reached his potential, I remember thinking at the time when he was meant to be marrying Stephanie Mcmahon only for it to be revealed that Triple H was married to her already that he would go on to be a main eventor which I guess he had a little push but nothing major.

At the end it was kinda sad to see him deteriorate ending up in the ECW brand.

I wondered what others thought of Test and if you had any memories of his time in the WWE?

I think Test was an impressively quick study that probably did his best stuff in his first year before hitting his ceiling, which was lower than everybody would have liked. Some of that was booking, as he never really seemed to recover from Triple H stealing his woman, but he also didn't really progress from his initial "moves pretty good for a big guy" stuff.  Also being below average on the stick during the most important time in wrestling to be able to talk didn't help either. I really liked Test in the beginning, and then didn't remotely care about him by the next year.

Remember really liking him at first. That big boot should get him in the HOF. And if that doesn't... boinking Stacy Keibler should.

Looks like I was the biggest Test skeptic among the PW history regulars.

I could just never get into the guy. He seemed so bland....so Diesel-lite. Had no hook. This was the Attitude Era. You needed a catchphrase. Or at least a hand gesture. Test had neither.

Part of it also stemmed from Test's rise coming during a time when my Mick Foley was my ideal. This was during the height of my "Pay yer dues!" phase. Unless they happened to be pretty much instantly amazing, like Angle, I wasn't going to get into a homegrown WWF project. Test just came out of nowhere to (briefly) become a pretty dig deal. I mean he goes from Motley Crue's bodyguard (years before I dug the Crue, I might add) to hanging and banging with the Corporation and Union within a few months. It was all a bit much. I also don't remember anything positive about his wrestling in those early days. Now he SHOULD have won me over with the Shane match at Summerslam, which I did enjoy, but he didn't. I gave Shane and the booking/agents/layout all the credit. And then he SHOULD have been a made man when HHH drugged & married his girlfriend. Logically that should have been a huge feud, maybe THE big feud, going forward in late '99-early 2000. But Test is all "Meh, whatever. I'm just gonna team with Albert now instead of going after the man who stole muh girl."

And teaming with Albert was the ultimate kiss of death. Again, Albert wasn't bad in the ring, but he had no hook, no reason for me to care. So I didn't. By this point Test is pretty much dead in the water (even though I did discover some good T&A vs. Hardys matches a few years back). Eventually he gets the dreaded "Bully" gimmick during and after the Invasion. Then he becomes an UnAmerican. The Foreign Fanatics they were not. And finally there was this little 4-6 week stretch where I was finally starting to dig Test a bit for the first and only time in his career. I think this is where I first became enamored with his awesome big boot that Ness mentioned. He had a nice little stretch of good matches- Henry & Tajiri were in there. I think Kane and/or Undertaker were as well (the double big boot spot in those matches became all the rage on the indies at the time. It always amused me that the likes of Ki & Danielson were aping spots from Test & Isaac Yankem :lol: ) After all these years Test was finally starting to slowly win me over. Well, then his nice little streak abruptly stopped when it hit a 400 pound roadblock known as Rikishi and I quickly lost interest again. We got that awful, interminable Steiner feud, which I imagine put off even the handful of proTESTers. Then he was gone for 3 years that felt a lot longer.

He comes back as an WWECW signee and I should have known then and there that WWECW was destined to become something I didn't want it to be. He did have a good match with RVD, and I didn't hate his Royal Rumble match with Lashley for the ECW Title (Test vs. Lashley for the ECW Title UGH!) but Test was like the polar opposite of what I viewed as an ECW Guy. He lasted, what, a year? Then he had a brief TNA run I barely paid attention to. Then he unfortunately passed away far too early.

TL;DR- I kinda sorta liked Test a little bit for maybe 4-6 weeks of his entire career. 

I used to feel like I was the only one who loved Test in real time. Best running big boot in the business. Fuck all others.

Oct 12, 2017 21:03:17 GMT @ness said:

Remember really liking him at first. That big boot should get him in the HOF. And if that doesn't... boinking Stacy Keibler should.

This guy gets it.

Also, I'm starting to feel lonely as a big fan of the T&A tag team and Albert.

I've grown to like Test as a performer. At first he seemed like a one-hit wonder who fluked his way into having a good match with Shane at SummerSlam, but his work on a lot of the B & C shows were among the best you would see in the Attitude Era.

The WWE dropped the ball with him big time. Not only was he pushed aside so Vince and Hunter could have their match at Armaggedon, they just buried him episode after episode to the point where he became irrelevant. The death knell was pairing him up with Albert so they could become the worst hoss team of all-time. Sure they worked some fun tag team matches, but they were booked so poorly that they come across as a second-rate Acolytes. They didn't really have much of a hook either, they were basically Jeff Jarrett & Owen Hart 2.0 with the whole valet deal.

If there was one guy who just needed to get out of the WWE for a year, go find success in another promotion and come back, it was Test. Hiding him in the tag division and then having him work Sunday Night Heat guys like Haku, Perry Saturn, Eddie Guerrero, Raven etc. did little for him.

How much would have Test's career have changed had he been in Vince's role against HHH at Armageddon 1999? Same match type, same ending. Vince in his corner. That would have been a big spot for him so I am just curious if this would have been better or worse than the HHH/Vince street fight and would have this altered the career of Test?

Had he replaced The Big Show at Survivor Series '99, the sky would have been the limit.

I just checked some results during the Armageddon period, and Test had one of the ugliest nine day spans ever. Triple H & X-Pac defeated Test & Kane (Triple H pinned Test) on Raw. X Pac pinned Test the next night at a Smackdown Taping, and then Al Snow pinned Test on Sunday Night Heat BEFORE Armageddon. Not only did Test not get the Armageddon slot, they fucking buried him all week leading up to it. The next night on Raw, Test teams with Triple H to take on Road Dogg & Billy Gunn, which ends with Triple H turning on Test, DX ganging up to beat him up, with Stephanie McMahon slapping him. Test then loses to Angle the next night at a Smackdown taping. Goddamn, Test got old school Kliq'd in the ass.

Looking back I find the Scott Steiner/Test partnership very bizarre. I never fully understood it.

Oct 13, 2017 2:42:47 GMT Kilgore said:

I just checked some results during the Armageddon period, and Test had one of the ugliest nine day spans ever. Triple H & X-Pac defeated Test & Kane (Triple H pinned Test) on Raw. X Pac pinned Test the next night at a Smackdown Taping, and then Al Snow pinned Test on Sunday Night Heat BEFORE Armageddon. Not only did Test not get the Armageddon slot, they fucking buried him all week leading up to it. The next night on Raw, Test teams with Triple H to take on Road Dogg & Billy Gunn, which ends with Triple H turning on Test, DX ganging up to beat him up, with Stephanie McMahon slapping him. Test then loses to Angle the next night at a Smackdown taping. Goddamn, Test got old school Kliq'd in the ass.

Damn. Burial. That's some fine sleuthing work, sir.

I may not have been a Test fan but I agree with the consensus here. He was robbed. Throw Test in Big Show's Survivor Series spot or have him wrestle as Vince's surrogate at Armageddon and WWF likely has itself a new star. As much as I'd hate to live in a world where Test is a former world champion, Test getting Big Show's spot at Survivor Series would have made all the sense in the world. 

Oct 13, 2017 2:42:47 GMT Kilgore said:

I just checked some results during the Armageddon period, and Test had one of the ugliest nine day spans ever. Triple H & X-Pac defeated Test & Kane (Triple H pinned Test) on Raw. X Pac pinned Test the next night at a Smackdown Taping, and then Al Snow pinned Test on Sunday Night Heat BEFORE Armageddon. Not only did Test not get the Armageddon slot, they fucking buried him all week leading up to it. The next night on Raw, Test teams with Triple H to take on Road Dogg & Billy Gunn, which ends with Triple H turning on Test, DX ganging up to beat him up, with Stephanie McMahon slapping him. Test then loses to Angle the next night at a Smackdown taping. Goddamn, Test got old school Kliq'd in the ass.

It wasn't like he just lost either, they went over and beyond to destroy Test.

On the SmackDown prior to Armageddon, Stephanie broke off the engagement. Not only was Test made to look like a loser, the acting in the segment was all-time bad. Being duped by Stephanie on Raw was bad, but his segment with Angle was worse. After being disqualified for using a closed fist, DX jump him from behind bust his nose and he's carted out of the arena. For the next few weeks, Test is forced to cover his face to sell a broken nose.

If it wasn't obvious before, HHH was the Janet Brady of the WWE.

I always thought Test had a great look, and was a decent worker. He wasn't great. Then again, the WWE has pushed a lot of guys much worse to higher extremes.

Oct 13, 2017 0:57:42 GMT 🤯 said:

Also, I'm starting to feel lonely as a big fan of the T&A tag team and Albert.

for me the only good thing about T&A was Trish.

As far as Test goes I could never get in to him.

The collatetal Albert, T&A, and Owen/Jarrett hate in here is killing me!

Honestly, as perfectly suited as the storylines were for Test to be slotted into Big Show and Vince's spots at Survivor Series '99 and Armageddon '99... I don't think it changed too, too much about Test's long-term trajectory. Even if he'd squeezed a brief WWF title reign out of the situation. I think at best, he'd end up like another Kane or Big Show. At worst, he'd end up like Benoit post-SummerSlam 2004 or Ken Shamrock post-1997.

I agree, but that's still a lot better than hiding in the tag division and put in a bunch of stop-start pushes nobody buys into because they've been trained to believe Test is irrelevant. At least as a former WWE Champion, he'd have some clout.

The worst outcome is that Test allows the run go to his head, asks for his release, winds up in TNA and throws away some of his best years just like Jeff Hardy did.

I was never a fan. I remember really hating the whole storyline with him and Stephanie Mcmahon, that storyline was really like the straw that broke the camels back as far as my fandom with WWF, I wouldn't say that storyline itself was the sole reason for it but I remember when that shit was running strong I was like man, you know I'm just about done watching this bullshit. I was all about that TNN rasslin show.

I grew to appreciate him though when I was neck deep into my fan fiction in need of big menacing mid-card heels to put my up and coming babyfaces over.  

He sure did exist.