Too Little Too Late: Doug Basham The Top Star

This might be something that nobody who watched the WWE during the "Ruthless Aggression" era would've expected just based on how easily replaceable Doug Basham was when he was on the main roster. However, first of all you need to remember that the WWE did have developmental territories before NXT and one of them was OVW which was the territory that gave the company a number of top stars. Unfortunately though a lot of the talent that called OVW home never was able to catch on within the ranks of main roster WWE for one reason or another and one of those names was Doug Basham. 

During his time down OVW the man once known as The Machine would spend time as both the top heel and top face in the company. This all would change though when as Jim Cornette said in an interview "One night my top heel came in the door and he was bald." As the story goes they had him shave his head to see what he would look like bald before he came up the main roster mind you at that point Doug had a full head of hair. Just think about this in OVW they had Doug fighting under mask against the likes of Nick Dinsmore, Rob Conway, and Danny Basham trying to spoil the opportunities these good guys were getting within the WWE as far as tryouts and other opportunities go. The main layer of this angle was Doug had a falling out with his uncle Danny Davis and left wrestling only to return on the mask after becoming spiteful of those mentioned above. Now compare this to his first storyline on the main roster where he and Danny had an S & M gimmick with Linda Miles as their handler.  

Overall the Basham Brothers were a solid tag team and among the best in the division during the weakest points for the WWE's tag teams. But it is hard not to wonder how things would've been different had the WWE saw the talent and potential Doug had to be a singles competitor as oppose to wasting him within a placeholder tag team. Honestly, I think that seeing Doug's success in the lower level I think that Doug could have be a stable mid card singles talent to add more depth to the WWE. I've seen a little bit of Doug's work at the time and he had potential but for some reason management didn't see it in him or didn't get the point of developmental at the time. Now some might point to Doug's short singles run following the split the Basham's had due to the draft, but I do think at that point it was a little "Too Little Too Late" for anything to really happen. ​