Ok, I just finished reading this thread, and for the most part I was agreeing with a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and I'll give my thoughts below. But first, I have to deal with this little bit of insanity.
Steve Austin - started as The Ringmaster; repackaged as Stone Cold - huge success.
Kane - started as a Dentist with bad teeth; repackaged as Undy's demented brother - huge success.
Ron Killings - started as K-kwik; repackaged as R-truth - big success.
Christian - like Albert never amounted to anything during his first run, went to TNA, came back and did much better.
Your logic doesn't hold any water...
Echelon, you were making some decent arguments for most of this thread. I didn't necessarily agree with all of them but you were staying on track. This little piece of bullshit above was clearly pulled out of your ass though, and here is why. The point you were replying to was about superstars that left WWE to go to another company, established themselves as stars there, and then came back to WWE repackaged as someone completely different. Now go back and look at those four examples. Go ahead, I'll wait.
See the problem? R-Truth is the closest one I can give you, because he did come back from TNA under a different name. The character itself isn't a whole lot different from what he has already portrayed (and I mean the character he returned with not the insane imaginary-friend having character he later morphed into).
Christian was mediocre in WWE, largely because he was overshadowed by Edge. He went to TNA, became a champion, and came back as...the exact same guy he left as. He wasn't repackaged, he wasn't changed, he was just moved a little higher on the card. Hell, he even brought back the peep-show as soon as he came back.
Steve Austin. Did you really misunderstand the point so badly? Steve Austin did not play the Ringmaster, leave the company, find success elsewhere, then return as Stone Cold. The Stone Cold character had it's roots in ECW,
before Austin ever came to WWE. Stunning Steve was fired from WCW and he let it all hang out when he went to ECW, drinking beers and flipping off the cameras, letting Eric Bischoff know exactly what he thought of the situation. When he came to WWE, they thought that his ECW character wouldn't fit with their programming so they saddled him with Ted Dibiase, the million-dollar belt, and the Ringmaster gimmick. When Dibiase jumped ship for WCW Austin dropped the goofy ring name and the belt, and slowly transitioned into the Stone Cold character he was more comfortable with. It's not like it just got handed to him upon a return to the company.
And Kane. The man who has been in the WWE longer than anyone on the roster that isn't named Undertaker...yes, he has been successfully repackaged better than perhaps anyone they've ever had. How did they do it? They put him in a freaking mask for six years. When Kane ripped the door off of the cell and tombstoned Undertaker, not a single person in the crowd was chanting "Isaac Yankem!" or "brush your teeth!" because no one in the crowd knew who he was. By the time people figured it out, Kane was established, his backstory was established, and Isaac Yankem was a distant memory.
Actually, the best case you could have made would have been Mick Foley. Although he had never been in the WWE at the time, he had made a modest name for himself as Cactus Jack in WCW and ECW. So when he debuted in WWE as Mankind, there was potential that the fans would shit all over it. The thing was, he was good enough at playing the character and making it believable that he get the fans to buy into it, and had his greatest success as Mankind. Sure, today we look at Mankind, Cactus Jack, and Dude Love as just extensions of Foley, but at the time he was 100% invested in that one character, and it worked.
Matt Bloom is a talented wrestler for his size. He
is a hell of a lot better than he was back in the Albert/A-Train days. But the Tensai gimmick is stupid, because he can't pull it off. Part of that is because as Tensai he isn't supposed to show any emotion except for rage (when he loses) so he is forced to play it like some kind of wrestling machine. This means he can't even try to connect with the audience, even as a heel, so all that they are left with is watching the guy that used to be Albert pretend to be this Japanese machine. That is really where it fell apart. He was gone for a few years, sure, and a lot of the kids probably didn't know who he was, but anyone that was watching wrestling just ten years ago was going to recognize him instantly.
Watch his first match, and from the very start the crowd was chanting "Albert" at him...and he couldn't do anything about it. Responding to the chants would take him out of character, but acting like they weren't there eliminated his one chance to start building that connection with the audience. Hell, one promo where he denounced the Albert name, explained that he had
earned the Tensai name through his dominance in Japan, and belittled the crowd for holding on to an inferior past rather than embracing the superiority that...is...TENSAI!!! could have had a huge impact on his current run. Instead, we got a whole bunch of nothing (and a lot of him beating up Sakamoto, cause who doesn't like seeing a small Japanese man get bullied)?
The segment last night is actually the best thing that could have happened to Tensai. He got to show a little bit of personality, and for the first time he
connected. Yes, it was embarrassing, yes he probably deserves better...except it probably saved his career with WWE, if they can capitalize on it and find a way to push him as a face. But that will only work if he builds on that fan connection, if he embraces his inner Albert, and if he shows that he is more than just a machine.
