Making Heath relevent, and making Cesaro a main eventer

[Radical Canadian Goose]

As we all know Heath Slater is a free agent. I happen to be one of his few fans, and would love to see a story line develop out of this. I'm quickly throwing something together here. Bear with me, I'm just having some fun.

Cesaro comes out on Raw and voices his displeasure with being drafted to Raw. Stephanie or Mick come out and assign him to Japan.

In the weeks or months to come Heath Slater is seen backstage on both Raw and Smackdown trying to sign with either brand, to no avail.

Heath, having had enough recruits another free agent in Luke Harper to cause chaos on Raw. Disrupting random matches, doing spontaneous commentary, etc. Slater reveals there is more to come.

After a couple of weeks of this, Heath and Harper attack Seth or Roman during a match. After being over powered by the attackee, a returning Cesaro's music hits. He stands on the ramp, pulls a Punkesque pipebomb on either Seth or Roman, including talking about meeting some mates in Japan who have set him free. As he drops the Mic Gallows, Anderson, Heath and Harper attack Seth or Roman.

Cesaro is instantly in the Main Event picture, Heath and Harper can go for singles titles and Gallows/Anderson can finally be tag champs.

 

[Azane]

I'm pretty sure the Free Heath plan is coming, but I feel it showing with Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas, who keep consoling heath on being undrafted, and mocking him for being an outcast of the social outcasts.

Heath will never touch the people at the high card, he's been too tainted to move beyond the midcard at this point.

Cesaro being super fed up with Authority figures and promos seems like a given, the seeds sewn in his worked shoot show that they're ready to test the waters w/ him again, he was in a #1 contender match months prior, so he's been upper midcard to almost ME level and they held back because of his poor promoing skills I think. Dude needs to just have a shutup and wrestle gimmick, because he stumbles on English.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

There's much more of an upside to Cesaro than Slater. As has been mentioned, Slater is pretty damaged goods at this point and there's very little hope of him becoming a main event level star; he's been a comedy jobber for too long and it would take nothing short of a massive, and I mean massive, overhaul to even give him a ghost of a chance.

As for Cesaro, one thing that'll hold him back are his promo abilities. Vince McMahon prefers wrestlers to have a much smoother delivery than Cesaro does, which he thinks he can always accomplish with scripted promos. Cesaro's promo backstage at SmackDown didn't seem scripted, but it wasn't smooth as he tripped over his own words some here & there. I don't think most fans would mind that, it feels much more organic after all and that's something most feel WWE needs more of, and English isn't Cesaro's first language; he speaks it very well of course, but it's still easy to get a bit tongue tied. That happens to us native English speakers sometimes, after all. You don't have to be super smooth on the mic to connect with fans, nor do you have to pop off one liners left and right. However, as long as Vince is running things, I think Cesaro's perceived problems on promos will hold him back in Vince's eyes.

 

[stingray11214]

I can see Heath Slater as a Main Eventer....in an outfit like WrestlePro, Tier 1, PWG, maybe even TNA. He has been made too much into a comedy jobber in WWE to be anything else. Not even a major overhaul could get him to the mid-card. You need people to take losses, and fill up house shows. Slater does that fine. I don't think Tough Enough's Mr. Alligator could fill Heath's shoes. This is why he is kept.

Cesaro's problem may be cutting promos. However, it seems that he does not bring in Merch money. If he was one of the top 3-4 in Merch sales, Cesaro would be a Main Eventer in no time. You want Cesaro? Buy a shirt.

 

[Jeff Deliverer of Mail]

Heath Slater should just stop wrestling and go into full manager mode. He'd have a better career in WWE if he started managing a small stable of wrestlers ala The Heenan Family. Call it The Slater Family.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

Heath's position in WWE and him being undrafted is just leading to one of those underdog pushes wrestling does. If he doesn't get over more than expected and end up with a short mid card title run i'll be very surprised.

 

[Aquaman6686]

Antonio Cesaro had a great opportunity to be an upper-midcard or even main event guy in 2014, but WWE sabotaged him by placing him with Paul Heyman, who instantly drained Cesaro's momentum and took the spotlight off his client, like he does with everyone he manages not named Brock Lesnar. I don't think Cesaro can ever recover from that. But, I think the best thing they can do with Cesaro on RAW right now, is that RAW is low on veteran tag teams who know what they're doing, so pair him back up with Jack Swagger. Reunite The Real Americans and have them run roughshod over RAW's tag team division for a while, then take the belts off The New Day at SummerSlam following a heel turn. Cesaro & Swagger worked brilliantly together, and now without Zeb, they'll have to talk for themselves, an area both men need more experience in. And somewhere down the line, inevitably, they'll split again, that's where you have Swagger put Cesaro over and move Cesaro back into the singles picture, preferably after drafting him to SmackDown in 2017.

As for Heath Slater, he's never had the potential to be a credible singles wrestler. He doesn't have the charisma or in-ring ability, or even the look. He's got a lot of heart, but without the talent to back it up, he's never going to make it on his own. He's already a 3-Time WWE Tag Team Champion, which frankly is better than he deserves, but what the hell - give him his little underdog babyface push, maybe even have him win a midcard title at a PPV, then drop it back to the former champion on the next TV episode. Have him put over a few more people, then release him during next year's annual spring cleaning.

 

[BestSportsEntertainer]

Yeah this isn't a good idea.

Why would they assign Cesaro to Japan? If they were going to do that, why would they have wasted a draft pick on him?

No one cares about Heath Slater. He's just a jobber and always will be.

Luke Harper is injured. He should join the Wyatts when he returns.

This wouldn't make Cesaro a main eventer. He just isn't on that level, and I don't see him ever getting there.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

There's much more of an upside to Cesaro than Slater. As has been mentioned, Slater is pretty damaged goods at this point and there's very little hope of him becoming a main event level star; he's been a comedy jobber for too long and it would take nothing short of a massive, and I mean massive, overhaul to even give him a ghost of a chance.

As for Cesaro, one thing that'll hold him back are his promo abilities. Vince McMahon prefers wrestlers to have a much smoother delivery than Cesaro does, which he thinks he can always accomplish with scripted promos. Cesaro's promo backstage at SmackDown didn't seem scripted, but it wasn't smooth as he tripped over his own words some here & there. I don't think most fans would mind that, it feels much more organic after all and that's something most feel WWE needs more of, and English isn't Cesaro's first language; he speaks it very well of course, but it's still easy to get a bit tongue tied. That happens to us native English speakers sometimes, after all. You don't have to be super smooth on the mic to connect with fans, nor do you have to pop off one liners left and right. However, as long as Vince is running things, I think Cesaro's perceived problems on promos will hold him back in Vince's eyes.

Not so sure it's that he gets tounge tied... I think it is basically down to Americans not getting accents easily.

It's the main reason British wrestlers have either had to be very well spoken or have neutral accents like Regal and Barrett to get any success and some like Neville, Drew & Mason Ryan struggled. Remember that whole Castle "Geordie" thing a few months back, welcome to Neville's life in the US... He can be as amazing in the ring, jacked to hell and on paper a can't lose talent... but to Vince, "Dammit, I wish he wasn't a Brit...he'd be perfect..." Until the London Wrestlemania comes around of course...

Ultimately, despite their wanting to appear global, WWE is still a US centric product, so those at the very top will be American, unless there is a VERY good business reason for them not to be - the Chinese guy will be fast tracked for sure for example.

Cesaro and his type are kind of in a difficult position but while I feel for them, no one ever said they could be the top guys in WWE... Only that that they could be successful. There is an expectation now that's been created by the WWE's stupid "conveyor system" of which I've written many times that it means every talent feels they should get the chance... they can't.

Cesaro is a modern day Rick Martel - a great, great A-List worker, a World Champion in another company, with the talent and looks to do well... but yeah, his accent is a big issue - not cos people don't understand it, but cos Vince wants Americans at the helm...and so do most American fans if they are honest. Cesaro is already far more successful than Martel was in WWE - but Martel was an AWA World Champ... Does he need to go to NJPW? Maybe, look what it did for AJ... WWE could do worse than send him over there for a year on the understanding he gets the belt for at least some of that time and in return they will let him lead an "invasion" angle to give NJPW some rub.

 

[Spencesc11]

What to do with Cesaro now? I would have him beat Rusev for the US Title. Give him a long title reign with multiple big wins. Then have him get in the final 3 of the Rumble next year. This will allow the management to see just how much the fans are behind him. Have him defend his US Title at Mania and then go on to win the MIB case next year. They need to have him cut less promos and be more of a "Chris Benoit" style champion. I know the reference isn't great but a great wrestler who does his talking in the ring rather than the mic.

 

[Noshowers]

Did you guys watch that shoot interview? I understood Cesaro fine and didn't feel like he slipped up much at all. I think he just has the rap of being bad at promos when in reality he is head and shoulders above guys like Del Rio and for me better then Reigns who certainly had plenty of success with that shortcoming

 

[Isaac Kaye]

I remember my pal said to me when Nexus were around that Slater would still be with the company in years to come and all others would be gone. It was a pretty shrewd observation. I think Wyatt and Ryback are the only others. Otunga is on commentary!

I was impressed by Slater's intensity on Smackdown, he's always had a bit about him. But he makes other people look good. He knows how to sell. WWE have placed him in that role for a long time and he's basically been booked as a jobber for years now. That said, he's more than capable of occupying a mid card slot given the right storylines and material.

As for Cesaro I think they pretty much summed up where they see him on the card when they had him lose clean to Jericho on the Draft show. He's an upper midcarder at best in their eyes.

He could occupy a main event slot - he has all the talent. He doesn't need to cut good promos to be a main eventer. Orton cut average promos for years and that didn't hold him back because he was brilliant in every other department.