Maven was a victim of Vince’s yelling at WrestleMania 18.
Though the Tough Enough winner didn’t have a long career in WWE, there’s plenty of moments on his list that solidify him as a WWE superstar. Having a match at WrestleMania 18 is one of them. Maven defended the Hardcore Championship against Goldust.
All was going well until Maven missed his signature dropkick to Goldust, which was a noticeable spot, but it didn’t particularly destroy the match. However, that didn’t matter to Vince. It was a botch on the biggest show of the year, so that pissed him off and Vince gave Maven a piece of his mind backstage (Transcript courtesy of Fightful).
“The trash cans we were using here were indeed real trash cans, but they were that lighter aluminum. The idea was going to be Goldust holding the trash can, and a stiff kick was gonna crumple it. It was going to look and sound vicious. Gotta hit the damn trash can, though. Vince was none too pleased. He literally stopped me in my tracks and just berated me. If there’s any time that you don’t want to get on Vince’s bad side, it’s WrestleMania. I would be willing to bet that missing the trash can stayed in Vince’s mind. Just, and it’s not because of something athletic, or ‘Maven can’t throw a dropkick,’ nothing like that.”
As you can imagine, that weighed on Maven’s mind for a bit and he had trouble sleeping for a while because of the botch.
“It’s a question of, ‘Can Maven perform when the lights are the brightest, when there are millions of you at home watching him, or is he going to miss another trash can? Is he going to miss his spot, miss his opportunity, miss the brass ring that we’re putting in front of him?’ 23 years later, I can giggle and laugh at it now, but I’ve lost sleep about missing that trash can many times.”
Botches happen. It’s a shame that Maven was ripped apart over a mistake that anyone could’ve made. Nevertheless, though that moment was noticeable at WrestleMania 18, it didn’t ruin the match or pay-per-view.
Feel free to check out Maven’s channel. The former WWE star is a rather insightful person who talks about the ins and outs of the professional wrestling world. There’s plenty of incidents he talks about and it’s worth checking out.