Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastardikai
No one should expect that anything that works at NXT and their small, niche crowd will translate to working on the bigger, mainstream audience. Things that worked in NXT: Adam Rose and Emma's bad dancer gimmick.
They dropped the 5 count gimmick because they didn't need an awkward guy ripping off King Kong Bundy at the time. They need a guy to be muscle for Dolph Ziggler. And he was a massive dude who could fill that role.
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However, there's a difference between things not translating and not even fucking trying. If you recall, Adam Rose was a Vince call... he was over in NXT doing the Leo Kreuger shell-shocked crazy man shtick. He was another one of those "let's change fucking everything" guys. And apparently, Vince got bored with his own creation, much like he did back in the day with Drew McIntyre. Remember, Drew came in with PERSONAL promo hype from Vince himself and won the IC title in pretty short order, then that was done relatively quickly.
Meanwhile, while still in NXT, Baron Corbin got LESS OVER with time, because once they tried to move him beyond the timed squash matches, he got really exposed at being the shits. Even with the active disdain, they called him up as-is, and then the whole world got to see how shit he was.
Divorcing how anyone may feel about the guys, EVERYTHING about Enzo and Cass was hitting and they didn't need to change a goddamn thing from the "niche" NXT crowd. Roman Reigns' pre-Shield repackaging was essentially the prototype of what he is right now, but he was nowhere near ready for it. Bray Wyatt: cult leader extrordanare worked fine. Kevin Steen and Samoa Joe were basically the same things they've always been.
Imagine if they gave every call-up a fair shake like that instead of instantly trying to make random folks change shit immediately.
So back to Big E being Dolph's heater. They could have chose plenty of folks already on the main roster for that. They could have picked a call up from NXT who didn't have anything to them yet. Instead they took a guy who was at least over there, and didn't even
try with him doing his own thing.
Its almost a coin flip if they're going to either leave someone alone, or try to fuck with them without even trying what was working for them. Using your Steve Austin comparison, it would be like he was full on beer drinking, middle finger, stunner, DTA "Rattlesnake" in NXT, and THEN for the main roster call up, they put The Ringmaster gimmick on him without even trying what was already working... and then when that went ass up, it's somehow because Steve wasn't trying.