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Add two really talented wrestlers, Gavin/Shawn Spears (Ronnie William Arniell) and developmental talent Mike Kruel to the list of those released today by World Wrestling Entertainment.
Spears was OVW Southern Tag Team champion with Cody Rhodes and was one hell of a heel during their feud in Ohio Valley. Once he was brought up to the main roster, he was used a few times in the ECW brand and then seemingly forgotten about. It's a real shame he wasn't given more of a chance to make a dent given the level of his work. He was one of the shining stars of the developmental system in my opinion but never had anyone get behind him to push for him on creative. His release is a real travesty in my opinion and there were a lot of developmental talents who's morale dropped when they heard the news as he was considered by many to be the best of the bunch. I always thought that he reminded me of Jamie Noble and remain amazed no one ever tried to pitch a modern day version of Hardcore and Crash Holly with those two. He had been with the company since 2006.
Kruel is a second generation talent (the son of NYC 1990s indy wrestler Bodyguard For Hire) from the New York City area who technically was a strong performer but never made it out of the developmental system. The knock on him was that he wasn't a good promo guy but I thought he showed improvement from a charisma and talking side once he got into the system. Kruel had a pretty entertaining gimmick at one point being billed as a "Real American Hero" who warned of the invaders from the North, Canada while he had two Russian sidekicks. Milena Rouka, who is now on Raw as Rosa Mendez, was Kruel's manager in developmental. Prior to being signed, he was all over the Northeastern circuit working for the ECWA and did some WWE enhancement work. He was signed in 2006 and held the OVW Heavyweight and Southern Tag Team titles during his time there.
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