Previewing Damien Sandow, the Newest WWE Smackdown Superstar

Tonight is finally the night.

After weeks of promos belittling the WWE Universe and the WWE roster, Damien Sandow makes his in-ring debut tonight on an episode of SmackDown. Sandow becomes just the latest man to return or debut in WWE since WrestleMania. After the returns of Brock Lesnar and Layla, we have seen the debuts of Ryback, Antonio Cesaro and now Sandow.

This, however, is not the first go-around for Sandow.

Despite being just 29 years old, Sandow has already experienced time in a WWE ring before. Ten years ago, Sandow was one of those rising young stars being brought into development by WWE.

Sandow may be better known by his real name of Aaron Stevens. His ring name of choice upon his signing was Aaron "Idol" Stevens. Eventually, the first name was dropped and Idol Stevens was a big part of Ohio Valley Wrestling, which was the developmental territory for WWE at the time. After a few years in the system, Stevens won the OVW Southern Tag Team Championships in 2004 with Nova—a man known to wrestling fans under the gimmick of Simon Dean.

In 2006, the first individual success for Stevens occurred as he won the OVW Television Championship in a triple threat match. Stevens came down mid-way through the match to replace an injured Ken Doane, known to many as Kenny from the Spirit Squad. He defeated his two opponents, Brent Albright and then-champion CM Punk.

Albright enjoyed a short stint on SmackDown as Gunner Scott; it shouldn't be hard to figure out what happened to CM Punk.

Later in 2006, Stevens was called up to the SmackDown roster. Alongside of KC James, Idol Stevens formed a tag team with Michelle McCool as their manager. McCool was using her teacher gimmick, referring to Stevens and James as her favorite "Teacher's Pets".

The trio would go after the WWE Tag Team Championships, held at the time by Paul London and Brian Kendrick. After a non-title victory over the champs, the Teacher's Pets got a title shot at No Mercy in 2006, which they lost. A few weeks later, the team was sent away to OVW to develop more. The main reason for this was McCool's enlarged kidney and a broken sternum forcing her to be hospitalized.

Without their manager, the Teacher's Pets were in OVW.

Stevens went back to OVW and won the OVW Heavyweight Championship in 2007. He would then lose it to Paul Burchill. Stevens would not get the chance to try and win it back as Stevens was released from his contract in August 2007, roughly a year after getting pulled from television.

It was down to the independent scene for Stevens, who would actually make a shocking return to OVW in late 2008, using that title shot he had earned and becoming OVW Heavyweight Champion once again. By January 2009, he would lose the title again and not stay around in the promotion. Stevens would wrestle in Puerto Rico for the next year and a half.

In July 2010, Stevens signed with WWE's new developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling, under the new name of Damien Sandow. Sandow would team up with Titus O'Neil to win the Florida Tag Team Championships in late 2010. Their 112-day reign is still the third-longest reign in the four-year history of the titles.

In March, following their title loss, Sandow turned on O'Neil and joined a faction including Lucky Cannon, Aksana and Maxine. In September, Sandow won the FCW 15 Championship from Seth Rollins, becoming just the second man in history to win the honor. The FCW 15 was formed as a tribute to Jack Brisco and has champions defending in 15-minute Iron Man-type matches.

In January 2012, Sandow lost the title to Richie Steamboat.

This freed up Sandow to begin using vignettes on SmackDown in April. He would tell the world about how uncivilized they are, blaming current pop culture and spouting off about his own virtues. Last week, Sandow's vignette said that he would be in the ring for the first time this week. His debut tonight will be against Derrick Bateman and, without spoiling it too much, it isn't your typical debut for Sandow, but he does draw a lot of heat for it.

This is the second chance as Sandow for the man once known as Idol Stevens. From watching some of his matches and promos in FCW, Sandow truly has learned from his past failures. Unlike other superstars that will be debuting in the coming weeks—like Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, who have been touring during house shows—Sandow has been to the main roster of WWE before. The charisma he did not have time to show the first time around will shine through and give him a nice mix between personalities like JBL and The Genius.

There is a lot of buzz about Damien Sandow and it all begins again for him. Hopefully, within a few years, Sandow will be a champion in WWE. This is being casual with predictions, but Sandow certainly has the talent to be a midcard or even world champion one day.

At 29, still, there is a lot of time for Damien Sandow in the WWE.

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