Aron Rex No Longer With Impact Wrestling

[It's Damn Real!]

In an interview with Title Match Wrestling at WrestleCon this past weekend, Aron Rex, f.k.a. Damien Sandow, revealed that he is no longer with Impact Wrestling. Rex, who debuted a new Liberace-esque gimmick in Impact Wrestling last October and was a part of their television tapings this past January, hinted at possibly retiring.

"I don't know if this is going to be it for me, because you know I'm no longer with Impact," Rex said. "Ending on this note is not a bad thing. I'm not saying that I'm never going to get in the ring again, but this is pretty cool and I'd much rather have people remember me for all the good stuff."

http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news...mer-wwe-star-no-longer-with-impact-wrestling/

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My word, what a hellacious flop of a run that was. He came in like a house on fire, and figuratively fell flat on his face just a short few weeks later.

I feel confident saying his Impact career can be summed up with the following gif:

 

[wrestler36]

I don't think that's quite a fair assessment of his run there. I mean he was hired literally a few weeks before they were about to close the doors on the company. I have a feeling he just fell through the cracks when the new people were analyzing the talent to keep. Which is too bad because I bet he would have been able to do great things with Prichard and Mantell in creative.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

He was given what, three different gimmicks in that span?

He came in like a hot babyface, worked at least one set of tapings as such, then turned pseudo heel winning the Grand Championship, changed his ring gear for another set of tapings, went nowhere, and then came back as Liberace randomly a week after Spud "quit", only to return as his valet.

What a mess.

 

[Sai the Uganda Guy]

The pseudo heel turn combined with the issues of Impact possibly closing its doors during that time killed Rex's momentum. Whether he would've fared better had Impact not hit the low it did, nobody can say for sure, but I'd like to think so. He's been one of my favorite guys since his WWE debut and I wish him the best. Some time out of the ring might do him some good, and maybe he can return to Impact later down the road when things are going better for both parties.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

The sad thing wax that is tna run was the same type of run that he had in wwe but done quicker. I want from a serious character to a comedy act so fast in tna that I didn't understand why he left wwe in the first place. He was just an afterthought in tna and the only reason he got the gran championship in the first place was because drew galloway got injured before the ppv.

I don't know what made him decide to retire bt the way he was treated in both wwe and tna probably had something to do with it.

 

[klunderbunker]

This continues to support one simple truth:

All these people who decide that WWE has no idea how to book these great talents might not know what they're talking about. Sandow got over with one idea and while he sold the heck out of it, I have no idea who thought of it. The problem for Sandow is after that stunt double thing, there's NOTHING to support it. He's a completely average in-ring worker, a decent talker and......that's pretty much everything. When he left WWE, everyone was saying you would see how great he was. Now maybe you can blame this on TNA (it certainly wouldn't be the first time) but I didn't see anything to suggest that WWE pushed him poorly. I saw him as someone who WWE managed to push far beyond his limitations.

It's almost like WWE has an idea of what they're doing with this stuff.

 

[MWRedskins]

Honestly, his TNA/Impact run to me all goes back to his problems with the WWE. it's all about booking, booking, booking.

In WWE, he was booked well at first.....but then when he lost to Cena, they just pushed him down instead of up and then he finally fell to the role of Stunt Double, did great with that, but then was again wasted...then left to TNA/Impact.

TNA's issue was that they had a free agent who they thought was a top moneymaker for them and while he has the talent in the ring and on the mic, you've got to book him right. When he came into TNA, his gimmick already was done. Drew Galloway was the guy who was saying that WWE never gave him the chance...then Rex said practically the same thing.....so the fans didnt care much about him...then he eventually won the Grand Championship as a face, but was clearly going heel...he won the title, but his heel run as the first Rex was very lame as his character wasnt changed much..

then they changed him to his last gimmick and while i cracked up at his last gimmick...it wasnt a gimmick that would get him over as a main event heel, though it's fun to see him look like that.....then Impact was taken over by the new ownership and basically, they have Jarrett fingerprints written all over it...if i hear (one day) that Impact and GFW merged, i wont be shocked.

to me, the best way to book Aron Rex or Damien Sandow is by having him as what he started out as, an intellectual savior of the unwashed masses. it was a gimmick that i felt was over and had potential as a main event star. he claims that he's smarter than you and he wins by being smarter than his opponents all while rubbing in out smart he is. that gimmick was very great and if another company hires him, that's the gimmick that should be used.

 

[stingray11214]

Sandow should never, and The Rock means NEVER, have signed with TNA. Indy promotions were setting up entire SHOWS around him. He was drawing crowds wherever he went. TNA was a spectacular clusterfuck. He was good going in. But, that Liberace gimmick...really, Aaron, really? No even praying 20 decades of the Rosary at the EWTN Chapel, plus a blessing from the Pope or a midnight visit from the Spirit of St. Joseph was going to save that character. He was TOTALLY and ABSOLUTELY wrong for a Liberace-type gimmick.

If he is smart, he goes back to the Indies, and restart a career for himself.

 

[TDFG]

If he had have had a gimmick like his heel Sandow days he might have gotten over, the name, the change in character etc. nothing worked.

I'm not sure where he goes from here, but as far as Impact is concerned, he isn't a big loss to the company.

 

[justinsayne]

He was always a much better promo than wrestler, if he really wanted to he could probably have a pretty decent career as a heel manager.

 

[Charismatic Enigma]

I think it's safe to assume with the return of Hawkins, Jinder, Drew McIntyre, and possibly Shelton Benjamin, it won't be long before we see him back in WWE.

He's been undeniably over at so many points in his career, it just seems like the obvious move with the roster being thinner than ever. Maybe send him to NXT for a bit to let the young talents learn from him.

 

[Vanilla Midget]

Aron Rex is as much to blame as the former management at Impact are to blame. He did not show up with his A game. He was looking pretty doughy to be the big bad heel Grand Champion and was not giving it all in the ring.

Abandoning what got him over in WWE was a mistake. The name was awful. If he wasn't going to be a play on Damien Sandow (Damien Stevens? Aaron Sandow? Damien Brando? He should have just been Aaron Stevens.

The Liberace transformation was one thing, the way it was handled was another. There was no gradual transformation, it was just like one day he woke up on the flamboyant side of the bed. Had they not rushed it, it could have worked (it wouldn't) have.

I'm not surprised here. There was nothing there in that Liberace gimmick and the fact WWE passed on it should be no surprise.

Aron Rex could have been a midcard player in Impact, but he brought no A game with him and was booked with a big fat pair of ham hands.

 

[ShinChan]

Good riddance, I guess.

I was a big fan of Sandow in WWE and he was good when he initiated his TNA run. But I don't know why he wasn't significantly over at Impact Zone. I might be wrong but I think that the audience just didn't care much about him. Or maybe they weren’t given any reason to care about it.

Too much of variations took place while his TNA stint was going on and I don't know who to blame. Maybe be the sides. He surely had enough mic skills. In-ring work wasn't great but not bad either. Not sure what's next for him now.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

This continues to support one simple truth:

All these people who decide that WWE has no idea how to book these great talents might not know what they're talking about. Sandow got over with one idea and while he sold the heck out of it, I have no idea who thought of it. The problem for Sandow is after that stunt double thing, there's NOTHING to support it. He's a completely average in-ring worker, a decent talker and......that's pretty much everything. When he left WWE, everyone was saying you would see how great he was. Now maybe you can blame this on TNA (it certainly wouldn't be the first time) but I didn't see anything to suggest that WWE pushed him poorly. I saw him as someone who WWE managed to push far beyond his limitations.

It's almost like WWE has an idea of what they're doing with this stuff.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it. Also, I always had a feeling that Sandow's support was more along the lines of what we saw with Zack Ryder after his initial push to the United States Championship. People were cheering Ryder on, they wanted to see him get pushed, they criticized WWE for not doing it and the support ultimately dried up almost immediately once Ryder started getting pushed. It was almost like many Ryder supporters thought "Okay, we got him pushed, now forget about him and let's move onto something else." While we'll never know for sure, I just always felt that Sandow would've gotten the same treatment; I always thought that a lot of fans were cheering Sandow as a form rebellion, you know fighting against the machine and all that crap, as they probably knew he wasn't going to get pushed and stopped caring once he did.

I haven't watched TNA in forever, but I do read up on what's going on now and again and I couldn't help but laugh a little at how Sandow was used in TNA. I just thought of all the times I heard people bitching about how Sandow needed to go to TNA where he'd be appreciated and used better whereas it's hard to think of any relevant name in a major promotion in the past 5 years used as badly as Sandow was in TNA.

 

[New Hot Fed]

He was symptomatic of the clusterfuck of how the TNA booking had become at the time. Given the ownership problems, they had no direction. And got Sandow just so they could have a name there. Just the example of him coming in as a ultra serious straight talker who they tried to book as a babyface shoot fighter for the Grand Championship belt was really misguided at how to handle someone like this. Liberace was going to nuts on the other side. With Sandow, like any wrestlers, it is about dozage and about how to forge a character and it has to be done right, with all the right ingredients. You cannot be too goofy and you cannot be too serious, esp. with someone like Sandow. I mean that is why Savior of the Masses worked, cause he could be intense and badass when he wanted but there was always the element of irony. Like you enjoyed seeing him be a jerk. Sort of like Rusev.

I will say the loss of Galloway was also a big way due the ownership and booking troubles too notice how when everything started with the ownership issues, you started to see less and of less of Drew cause the wrestlers had less dates and he was taking all the dates he could in the UK and he became big over there. And it was around that time when Rex came in. And they had Drew play heel for some stupid reason and it didn'y fit him. So I was not shocked when Drew didn't re-sign with Impact. His mind had left the company a long time ago.