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Chris Kanyon - Chris Kluscaritis 10


On July 6, 2001, Kanyon made his WWE debut on SmackDown! as part of The Alliance. He made his WWF pay-per-view at InVasion, a one-off show featuring WWF superstars against The Alliance. At this show, he formed a team with Shawn Stasiak and Hugh Morrus in a winning effort against The Big Show, Billy Gunn and Albert in a six-man tag team match. The match was intentionally short and uneventful. On July 26, 2001 in the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Booker T, at the request of Stephanie McMahon, gave Kanyon his United States Championship. Upon being presented with the title, Kanyon began referring to himself as "The Alliance MVP" and frequently posed the rhetorical question "Who betta than Kanyon?".

Kanyon reformed his tag team with fellow Alliance member Diamond Dallas Page on the August 6, 2001 edition of Raw when Kanyon helped Page attack The Undertaker backstage. On the August 9, 2001 episode of SmackDown!, they defeated the Acolytes Protection Agency (Faarooq and Bradshaw) for the WWF Tag Team Championships. Their reign lasted until August 19, when they were defeated by the Brothers of Destruction (Kane and The Undertaker) for the title in a steel cage match at SummerSlam. Kanyon went on to lose the United States Championship to Tajiri on the September 10, 2001 episode of Raw. Kanyon then had a small feud with Matt Hardy over Kanyon hitting on Lita. Kanyon pinned Hardy on September 24, 2001 edition of Raw. The feud eventually ended in early October after the Hardy Boyz defeated Kanyon and multiple Alliance partners, such as Rhyno, Lance Storm, Chuck Palumbo and Hugh Morrus, in a series of tag team matches. Kanyon then began working on the WWE's B-shows.

On October 29, 2001, Kanyon tore his left anterior cruciate ligament during a dark match with Randy Orton. He would appear only once in a cameo role at the 2001 Survivor Series pay-per-view. At this show, a team representing the Alliance took on a team representing the WWE in a tag team match. A pre-match stiupulation declared that the side represented by the losing team would all be released from their contracts (excluding title holders and the winner of the immunity battle royal, Test). As a result of the Alliance team's loss, Kanyon was "fired" along with all the other Alliance members. Eventually, all Alliance members returned as WWE superstars, usually quietly without a storyline or announcement. This storyline allowed Kanyon time to recover from injury

He would start working dark matches before Raw and SmackDown throughout late 2002 and early 2003. He made one appearance in a backstage segment with the APA, where they wanted him to attend a battle royal at the next pay-per-view event. Kanyon was among the challengers, but was largely inactive. On the February 13, 2003 episode of SmackDown! he returned to the main SmackDown roster, emerging from a large crate, from The Big Show, dressed as Boy George and singing the 1983 Culture Club hit "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" to The Undertaker, prompting The Undertaker to attack him. Kanyon made his televised in ring return on the April 19, 2003 edition of Velocity with his "Who Betta Than Kanyon?" gimmick and was defeated by Rhyno. Despite a few appearances on SmackDown, Kanyon was relegated to Velocity as a jobber from that point on for the rest of 2003, in addition to wrestling on several dark matches and house shows as Mortis, until his contract expired.

Chris Kanyon died on April 2, 2010.

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