2002 was a landmark year for the WWE. The company introduced four stars who became some of the company’s biggest draws since their debut during the course of the year. Randy Orton, Batista, Brock Lesnar, and John Cena all made their arrival to the main roster during the course of that year and have since developed into box office draws in the industry and almost all of them have found appeal outside the WWE.
While Lesnar found a veteran manager in Paul Heyman and Batista and Orton found themselves under the wings of Triple H and Ric Flair as part of Evolution. While it’s unsure why Lesnar didn’t find himself in that position, Arn Anderson has a good explanation why Cena never did.
Arn Anderson was a long time WWE producer until last year, and on the recent episode of his podcast, Anderson talked about how Orton, Batista, and Cena were all being groomed to be stars of the future for the company. They decided to put Orton and Batista in Evolution because they needed more guidance than Cena at the time.
“So Cena was gonna be split off by himself, and I think the company saw an opportunity to take Dave [Batista] and Randy, who needed to have more seasoned talent guiding them, which would be Hunter [Triple H] and Ric, and they saw an opportunity because those guys looked like a trillion dollars together when they came through that curtain. All four of them.”
“Dressed to the nines, and it was just a good combination of old and new, and you had a good chance to get a couple of new guys over really quickly. I thought that concept worked, I thought those guys worked really well together, and it worked.”
All four of those talents have become absolute stars for the company. It may be the finest crop of developmental talent the WWE has ever debuted in a single year, based on accomplishments in and out of wrestling.
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