The 'Arrogant' Gimmick Is Getting Generic..

[TJWWE]

Back in the day, this gimmick was rare to see as the WWE had other heel gimmicks but in today's society, they seem to think that having the 'Arrogant, Egotistical and only-cares-about-themselves' gimmick is the only heel thing they can do.

Many superstars today in the WWE have this gimmick:
-Alberto Del Rio
-Cody Rhodes
-Curt Hawkins
-Dolph Ziggler
-Drew Mcintyre
-Heath Slater
-Jack Swagger
-Johnny Curtis
-The Miz
-Tyson Kidd

Now, that's 10 superstars that have the same kinda gimmick & it's getting boring. So I have 2 questions for you.

Out of the 10, which superstar plays the character the best?
& What other heel gimmicks would you give to the others?

 

[Rey]

The Miz and Cody Rhodes I think do the gimmick best. Dolph Ziggler is quickly rising tho.
As for what the others would be. Hmm. Good question.
Thinking back there's not many other gimmicks a Heel can pull of successfully. I think.
Other than the monster gimmick but everyone on that list are "pretty boys".

Although, having a just mean-doesn't-give-a-damn or an arrogant monster (same thing? maybe) type would fit
Drew, Curt and Johnny. Please do something with Johnny, poor kid has been at FCW
for, what, 4-5 years?

 

[rge2010]

The arrogant heel gimmick has been around for years. It is a classic trait of a certain type of heel and this wont change anytime soon. It draws heat. Go back to the early-mid 90s...Rick Martel, Shawn Michaels, Mr Perfect, Ted Dibiase, Rick Rude, Ric Flair....all equally as arrogant as the next.

As for other heel gimmicks, well you got 'the monster' like Kane, Brodus Clay, Mark Henry. You have seen 'the goofs' like Simon Dean, Kurt Angle and Christian, and then bullies like Sheamus, Wade Barrett and Batista. Suppose you could throw in 'the bad ass' like Razor Ramon, Diesel and Steve Austin.

 

[crippler]

Back in the day, this gimmick was rare to see as the WWE had other heel gimmicks but in today's society, they seem to think that having the 'Arrogant, Egotistical and only-cares-about-themselves' gimmick is the only heel thing they can do.

Many superstars today in the WWE have this gimmick:
-Alberto Del Rio
-Cody Rhodes
-Curt Hawkins
-Dolph Ziggler
-Drew Mcintyre
-Heath Slater
-Jack Swagger
-Johnny Curtis
-The Miz
-Tyson Kidd

Now, that's 10 superstars that have the same kinda gimmick & it's getting boring. So I have 2 questions for you.

Out of the 10, which superstar plays the character the best?
& What other heel gimmicks would you give to the others?

Do you really think they all have the same gimmick arrogant is a characteristic of the gimmick example Del Rio his gimmick is the rich guy who drives expensive cars out during his entrance that thinks it his destiny to be a world champion none of these guys main gimmick is arrogant its just apart of it that they need to be a decent heel. If the Miz was not arrogant he would probably be face to the fans.

 

[R.K.O]

It's not only the "Arrogant" gimmick that is becoming generic, other characteristic such as the "Smiley" good guy (John Cena, Morrison, Zeke, Ted Dibiase, and etc.) are becoming way generic too. It's like when a guy turns face his character get thrown out of the water and he suddenly start smiling and is friends with everyone.

One notable example was Mark Henry years ago when he was draft to Raw turned face, started smiling and totally disregarding his previous heel character. Later on became worse when he teamed up with MVP. Another notable example would be Mason Ryan recently.

On a lesser extent, Angry (Mark Henry, Brodus Clay, Skip Sheffield, Sheamus), Psychotic (Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes), Coward (90% of the heels) are some of the common characters found in today's era too. Also, 90% of divas roster are just barbie dolls and other more, no characters whatsoever.


Where is the diversity of interesting characters all over the roster like during the Attitude Era with Mankind, The Rock, Kane, Goldust, DX and many others?

I'm not asking for the attitude era to come back but for the creative to be more creative with characters. Who would be interested in seeing a bunch of clones doing almost the same stuffs throughout the show? It's no coincidence that the roster is the weakest in decades and interest in wrestling is tanking.

 

[Miz_Mark]

Ok, I just have to weigh in here. I'm not going to touch on every guy on your list, but to say that all of these guys are generic and the same because they are arrogant is absurd. Alberto Del Rio, Dolph Ziggler, Cody Rhodes, and the Miz all have radically different gimmicks. Sure, they're all arrogant, but in very different ways.

ADR's gimmick is that he is a foreign aristrocrat and is arrogant because he is rich, cultured, educated, and destined for greatness.

Dolph Ziggler's gimmick is that he is the perfect f*cking professional wrestler who can do anything in that ring and is arrogant because he knows how damn good he is and wills how off to prove it.

Cody Rhodes as dashing had the gimmick of being arrogant because he's so damn pretty and we should all adore his perfect teeth, hair, and skin, then went into the disfigured gimmick which was totally different, and has come through on the other side with the gimmick of a man who has suffered loss and dependency and is no arrogant because he's survived and come through it and let go of his crutches and now having experienced that is free to let his greatness come forward.

And the Miz' gimmick is that he is arrogant because he's the best entertainer the company has ever seen and is a totally self made man who crawled, scratched, and fought his way from reality TV through the ranks to become one of the best in the business, and he has damn sure earned his spot and earned your respect, and if anyone refuses to grant him what he is entitled to, he will prove his point and destroy you.

Calling those guys generic and the same? Insane. Come on, think about it for half a second.

 

[R.K.O]

Ok, I just have to weigh in here. I'm not going to touch on every guy on your list, but to say that all of these guys are generic and the same because they are arrogant is absurd. Alberto Del Rio, Dolph Ziggler, Cody Rhodes, and the Miz all have radically different gimmicks. Sure, they're all arrogant, but in very different ways.

ADR's gimmick is that he is a foreign aristrocrat and is arrogant because he is rich, cultured, educated, and destined for greatness.

Dolph Ziggler's gimmick is that he is the perfect f*cking professional wrestler who can do anything in that ring and is arrogant because he knows how damn good he is and wills how off to prove it.

Cody Rhodes as dashing had the gimmick of being arrogant because he's so damn pretty and we should all adore his perfect teeth, hair, and skin, then went into the disfigured gimmick which was totally different, and has come through on the other side with the gimmick of a man who has suffered loss and dependency and is no arrogant because he's survived and come through it and let go of his crutches and now having experienced that is free to let his greatness come forward.

And the Miz' gimmick is that he is arrogant because he's the best entertainer the company has ever seen and is a totally self made man who crawled, scratched, and fought his way from reality TV through the ranks to become one of the best in the business, and he has damn sure earned his spot and earned your respect, and if anyone refuses to grant him what he is entitled to, he will prove his point and destroy you.

Calling those guys generic and the same? Insane. Come on, think about it for half a second.

Of course there will be slight modifications in the character, just like duplicating a picture and changing it's color and claim it's a different picture. But at the end they still feel the same.

Do they act like cowards and turn down challenges or tries to leave halfway through a match? Are they arrogant and thinks they are really good? Do they brag about the same thing over and over again?

Characters like Mick Foley with personality disorder, the bizarre Goldust, original. Characters like The Miz (AWESOMEEEEEEE and nothing else), Alberto Del Rio (DESTINYYYY!!!) Dolph Ziggler (SHOW OFF/PERFECTION!!!), clones.

I'd agree with you about Cody Rhodes though, he's one of the few wrestlers that actually have an interesting gimmick. Although taking the mask off is a bad decision.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I can't really say it's generic because arrogance is a necessary trait for a wrestling heel. Even monsters like Mark Henry & Kane have displayed arrogance during their time as heels. Henry all but comes right out and says "I'm the baddest mother humper walkin' God's Green Earth. You think I'm not? Step right on up and prove that I'm not". His comments towards Daniel Bryan. Big Show, Teddy Long, etc. have all been the words of someone with a surpreme level of confidence with little to no shred of humility.

Look at just about every classic villain from movies, television shows, comic books or what have you. All of them are arrogant. It's so easy to dislike an arrogant person, especially if it looks as though they're some justification for their confidence. Alberto Del Rio's character is a super wealthy Mexican aristocrat. Practically "royalty". Show me one member of "royalty" that doesn't come across as being above everyone else. Look at Dolph Ziggler, a wrestler that prides himself on his looks & prowess inside the ring.

You've got faces, you've got heels and you've got tweeners. All of them have specific traits necessary to their characters that just can't be avoided or shoved aside.

 

[Miz_Mark]

To say these men are the same character but a different color is absurd. Are John Cena, Randy Orton, Sheamus, and Rey Mysterio the same character? They are all faces who don't back down and will fight anyone.

Is Christian also a clone of these men? He is an arrogant heel. But he's also a cunning strategist and master manipulator.

Was CM Punk a clone of these men as a heel? He was every bit as arrogant. Hell, he's still every bit as arrogant. But he's also a renegade and a revolutionary who marches to the beat of his own drum.

These men are radically different.

Dolph Ziggler a coward who walks out of matches? He's pulled double duty on back to back pay per views, and put on show stealing matches against top faces without backing down consistently.

The Miz is awesome and nothing else? The Miz is a self made man who will do anything to succeed, who goes out of his way to prove he can out entertain in any capacity, and who shows a brutality and a fierceness to be recognized and succeed.

ADR, sure he'll some times beg off of a match, but he's also the man who has cleanly defeated former world champions time and time again, and has put men on the shelf, and has proven he can go toe to toe with anyone.

It is mindnumbing to me that anyone could say these men are all the same just because they are all arrogant. If you choose to limit yourself to one very narrow aspect of their characters that could easily be applied to almost anyone with confidence in his abilities, then by that inane definition they are the same, much like you can say every wrestler alive is the same because they are all men who want to be champion. It's ridiculous. These are dynamic and nuanced characters who have more that differentiates them then unites them.

 

[gbaby_steve25]

I think your taking it a little to close to the heart there OP! The idea and concept of the heel wrestler is to have an overly confident, arrogant, classless, cheating, type persona to be a heel. Its been like that for generations. I do have some things to bring up about a few of the superstars you listed.

Cody Rhodes- Dashing is back, and although he is not going by Dashing at this moment, he is still, IMO, the best heel right now for the simple fact he makes me hate him. His mic skills are still on the short end, but there gradually improving. His matches he has had lately with Randy Orton, and losing the mask finally has really put a pop back into him and he is really coming off strong on tv. I'm expecting big things out of Cody in the future.

Michael Cole- The arrogant of the arrogance. Every time he makes some dumb ass comment about this or that, I hope someone (say CM Punk) just beats his ass down. This is what an arrogant heel should do. He should be able to make us all wish he would just have his ass beat and be taken off of tv forever. I'm still thinking there is a future ass whooping coming his way and a change of who he is, I just am not sure when it'll happen, but god will we all love it!

Dolph Ziggler- Ok so I know I'm gonna catch it for this, but I really see a lot of Curt Henning's Mr. Perfect in his character that is forming right now. I like it. If he would ditch the bitch, Vicki, I think it would honestly help his character improve even more. He does not need a mouth piece nor does he need someone out there screaming and being ignorant half the time. I know Michael McGillicuty is Joe Henning, but Ziggles right now is doing that arrogant im the best at everything I do, persona very well right now. I could possibly see in the future a tag team (if that division WWE has talked about making big again) of Ziggler and Henning, and the team being referred to as Perfection...

Again this is all in MY OWN OPINION! Just some thoughts I had, so no the gimmick is not over played, it has just gone through some periods where the heel's playing them have not been very well. But it is starting to change.

 

[R.K.O]

To say these men are the same character but a different color is absurd. Are John Cena, Randy Orton, Sheamus, and Rey Mysterio the same character? They are all faces who don't back down and will fight anyone.

Is Christian also a clone of these men? He is an arrogant heel. But he's also a cunning strategist and master manipulator.

Was CM Punk a clone of these men as a heel? He was every bit as arrogant. Hell, he's still every bit as arrogant. But he's also a renegade and a revolutionary who marches to the beat of his own drum.

These men are radically different.

Dolph Ziggler a coward who walks out of matches? He's pulled double duty on back to back pay per views, and put on show stealing matches against top faces without backing down consistently.

The Miz is awesome and nothing else? The Miz is a self made man who will do anything to succeed, who goes out of his way to prove he can out entertain in any capacity, and who shows a brutality and a fierceness to be recognized and succeed.

ADR, sure he'll some times beg off of a match, but he's also the man who has cleanly defeated former world champions time and time again, and has put men on the shelf, and has proven he can go toe to toe with anyone.

It is mindnumbing to me that anyone could say these men are all the same just because they are all arrogant. If you choose to limit yourself to one very narrow aspect of their characters that could easily be applied to almost anyone with confidence in his abilities, then by that inane definition they are the same, much like you can say every wrestler alive is the same because they are all men who want to be champion. It's ridiculous. These are dynamic and nuanced characters who have more that differentiates them then unites them.

John Cena, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio aren't clones because they are established superstars before this era incapable of producing unique wrestlers.

CM Punk's character is a cult leader ever since the SES so comparing him to people like Dolph is basically comparing apples to oranges.


You must have selective memory since Dolph clearly wanted to walk out of the match against Randy before Wade intervened, Miz was a major coward during his WWE title run and while Del Rio is a strong heel but he does display cowardly traits like you have agreed.

It's not me focusing on one narrow aspect of their characters, it's because that's the only memorable point about their characters. Your description of them like Miz is self made man were either their background of the minor modification to their characters like the "color changing" I have said. You claim Del Rio to be a wealthy aristocrat but I don't think his character has shown enough to make himself stand out. Other than the car during his entrance and a puny personal announcer he has shown little traits of a wealthy person as they will do more with their wealth to help them gain advantage. Classic wealthy characters like Million Dollar Man would humiliate the crowd, make himself a championship, tries to buy himself to the WWE Championship. JBL would buy himself goons that help him retain his championship (Orlando Jordan and others).

That's what I call a character that is defined and stands out. Not the current half assed clone characters we have now.

 

[Miz_Mark]

John Cena, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio aren't clones because they are established superstars before this era incapable of producing unique wrestlers.

CM Punk's character is a cult leader ever since the SES so comparing him to people like Dolph is basically comparing apples to oranges.


You must have selective memory since Dolph clearly wanted to walk out of the match against Randy before Wade intervened, Miz was a major coward during his WWE title run and while Del Rio is a strong heel but he does display cowardly traits like you have agreed.

It's not me focusing on one narrow aspect of their characters, it's because that's the only memorable point about their characters. Your description of them like Miz is self made man were either their background of the minor modification to their characters like the "color changing" I have said. You claim Del Rio to be a wealthy aristocrat but I don't think his character has shown enough to make himself stand out. Other than the car during his entrance and a puny personal announcer he has shown little traits of a wealthy person as they will do more with their wealth to help them gain advantage. Classic wealthy characters like Million Dollar Man would humiliate the crowd, make himself a championship, tries to buy himself to the WWE Championship. JBL would buy himself goons that help him retain his championship (Orlando Jordan and others).

That's what I call a character that is defined and stands out. Not the current half assed clone characters we have now.

They are HEEELS! Of course they are sometimes going to be arrogant and cowardly and try to walk out on matches and cheat, because that is what heels do!

Mark Henry is the baddest motherf*cker walking right now, and to say he is a clone of these other men would make you clinically insane, but he too is arrogant, and sometimes cowardly, and has tried to walk out of matches and cheat, because he is a HEEL.

ADR hasn't done enough to show he's a rich aristocrat? Before he ever set foot in the ring for months he did vignettes talking about his wealth and culture and education and sophistication. He is constantly giving interviews as himself and being put over by the announcers talking about how he's descendant from Spanish royalty, how his estate in Mexico employs thousands, how he was going to fund the Mexican Olympic team personally so he could compete before realizing he shouldn't have to foot the bill for men who are beneath him. He's gone on at length about how he's more sophisticated than the peasants like Rey Mysterio, he told Bret Hart that he employs illegal Canadian immigrants to clean his mansion and tend to his gardens. And every single week he comes to the ring in a different 6 figure car and announced by his personal servant to rub in the faces of the fans that he is rich and superior to them. What does he have to do, wrestle with a wad of hundreds in his hand for you to get it?

If these men are clones, than every heel is a clone, and every face is a clone, and John Cena is nothing more than the #1 Hogan clone in the company. Ridiculous.

 

[R.K.O]

They are HEEELS! Of course they are sometimes going to be arrogant and cowardly and try to walk out on matches and cheat, because that is what heels do!

Mark Henry is the baddest motherf*cker walking right now, and to say he is a clone of these other men would make you clinically insane, but he too is arrogant, and sometimes cowardly, and has tried to walk out of matches and cheat, because he is a HEEL.

ADR hasn't done enough to show he's a rich aristocrat? Before he ever set foot in the ring for months he did vignettes talking about his wealth and culture and education and sophistication. He is constantly giving interviews as himself and being put over by the announcers talking about how he's descendant from Spanish royalty, how his estate in Mexico employs thousands, how he was going to fund the Mexican Olympic team personally so he could compete before realizing he shouldn't have to foot the bill for men who are beneath him. He's gone on at length about how he's more sophisticated than the peasants like Rey Mysterio, he told Bret Hart that he employs illegal Canadian immigrants to clean his mansion and tend to his gardens. And every single week he comes to the ring in a different 6 figure car and announced by his personal servant to rub in the faces of the fans that he is rich and superior to them. What does he have to do, wrestle with a wad of hundreds in his hand for you to get it?

If these men are clones, than every heel is a clone, and every face is a clone, and John Cena is nothing more than the #1 Hogan clone in the company. Ridiculous.

THAT'S THE PROBLEM! THEY NEED NOT BE ARROGANT AND COWARDLY JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE HEELS! THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED A VARIETY FOR HEELS! THEY NEED NOT BE THE SAME! In attitude era we have heels like New Age Outlaws, Val Venis and Kane. Which Masked Kane did not do any of the walking out stuff and still remains as a heel! Now we have a bunch of arrogant guys acting similarly!

I do realise there are wrestlers who are differently like Mark Henry who is an angry monster heel NOT an arrogant heel. CM Punk do have one of the most unique personality in the roster but the problem is that they are few and there is not enough such unique wrestlers! For arrogant heels itself the OP easily listed down a few which most act similarly.

I do know the vignette Del Rio has had, and how he has been saying he's rich. And his entrance. But his character has not fully taken advantage of that trait. As a wealthy person, he could have easily bought more help on his side than relying on a helpless personal ring announcer to interfere. He could have done much BETTER to gain an advantage like any wealthy person would do. If you are a wealthy person, wouldn't you hire a big strong muscle to help you win matches instead of a weak announcer? That is what I mean by half assed development.

Right now, most heels (as list by OP) and faces (Ryan, Zeke, Kofi, Evan, all the smiley guys) are indeed clones and it's because of WWE's lazy character development and sticking to the boring format of having generic characteristics for faces (smiling, friends with everyone) and heels (coward, arrogant, ego-istic). If attitude era taught us anything is that they need not stick to this format (The biggest face of the era was beer drinking rebel, far from a smiling good guy).

 

[NotoriousWWE]

What a terrible, terrible way to critisize the possible best heel gimmick out there. Getting generic? More like getting interesting. It all depends on WHO and HOW the gimmick is used and by. Dolph Ziggler for instance is for me the best heel with this gimmick right now, he simply states he is a Show Off but can back it all up in the ring. He gains tons of heat by doing the vain handstand and the usual taunting. Whereas a guy such as Heath Slater gets no heat whatsoever because the way in which his character has been built. Yes, a lot of superstars use this gimmick but its not because its an easy persona to use, its just the best way of gaining heat.

 

[Miz_Mark]

Despite your rose colored, hazy memories of what you believe the attitude era was, you cannot find a heel in history who for the life of his heel run was never arrogant, cowardly, a cheater, or someone who backed down from a fight. You can't find it. It's all a matter of degree. If you look at any character who is not at all any of those things, you have a face.

You acknowledge that Mark Henry is a very different character, but fail to recognize that he has done every single thing and demonstrated every single trait that you chastize his fellow heels for. By your own criteria, he is another generic heel clone.

You half acknowledge everything Alberto Del Rio has done to establish his character, but claim it's not enough. Because he is not a clone of the Million Dollar Man, he's generic and a clone of a standard heel. It's absurd.

There is as much variety in character between these men as there has been between the members of the roster at any point in the past. The only difference between this and by gone eras is that wrestlers are no longer so fully 1 dimensional caricatures that a single trait defines them. If being an actual person with a variety of traits and behaviors that make sense coming from someone other than a cartoon means you are a clone, then yes, they are all clones, and hopefully will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Because I certainly enjoy "clones" who are radically different from each other and excellent entertainers far more than I would cardboard cutouts that have to have a single trait define their existence in order to possess that trait at all.

 

[bk555]

i can agree with everyone here who says that it is the variation of the arrogant characters that make them entertaining. Theres no way you can call ADR, rhodes, miz, and ziggler the same but the rest of them are the same and thats why they are on the lower middle card

 

[The Suplexer Perfecter]

What heels are never arrogant? How many years do we have to go back? What other heel "gimmicks" were there? The only ones I can think of are Monster heels.

Mr. Perfect - Arrogant
Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase - Arrogant
Paul Orndorff - Arrogant
Every member of the Four Horsemen, Ric Flair, Arn and Ole Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Luger, Windham - Arrogant
Roddy Piper - Arrogant
Hollywood Hogan - Arrogant
Triple H - Arrogant

I could keep going and going. This is just redundant.

Welcome to Pro Wrestling.

 

[wwenba]

You guys are confused. No one ever said a heel is "never arrogant". What is being said is that it is getting pretty generic and I agree.

Too many people being the "young cocky heel". They are all the same gimmick and just portraying it with their own flavor. They try to make it different by using different buzz words but its all the same. Sure in the attitude era Val Venis was arrogant but he was unlike anyone else on the roster because his gimmick was different from everyone else's.

Dolph Ziggler is going around with the buzz words "perfection" and now "show off". Miz goes around with the same thing. Doesn't Miz think he is perfect? Isn't Miz a big show off? Yes, but he just replaced these gimmick words with "Awesome" instead. I like Dolph far more cause of his wrestling ability but the character elements boil down to the same thing.

Cody with the mask was something I found unique and different from this because it wasn't the same arrogant tone, in fact it seemed it was almost the opposite like he was embarrassed and ashamed of himself yet still played the heel role perfect.

All heels can be arrogant but it's a problem when there is nothing else of substance. Ziggler and Miz can easily cut a promo tomorrow about how they know it is there destiny to be champion, but throw a suit and an accent on it and now its Alberto Del Rio.

 

[Mercer the Ruthless]

It's not about how many people have done the gimmick, it's about how well and how they run it. Even with the Superstars you listed, they differentiate, Cody Rhodes is running a spin on the Cocky, hotshot gimmick by adding in his slight insanity touch that he ran. Not the same as Ziggler's perfection, braggadocios, Show off, "how good am I?" gimmick. When you run down the list there are slight to stark difference between them. Del Rio is is an aristocratic, so he spins the angle of a privileged, made-man; one again different from Cody's and Ziggler's. I don't know if McIntyre is still running his "Chosen One", overly aggressive, arrogant gimmick but it too was different from the guys I mentioned previously.

When you analyze a Superstar, comparing him to another talent in the process, don't just list the similarities because that's just lazy. You have to contrast them. Because they place different spins on the gimmick. Which makes them vastly different or maybe only slightly different. Miz's gimmick is not Ziggler's gimmick, ADR's gimmick is NOT Cody's gimmick and Swagger's Gimmick is not McIntyre's Gimmick.

Any villain you can probably think has a narcissistic trait, it has to be in there, unless you just want him to be insane, so I guess that's what I would like to see, an insane, ridiculously charismatic technical wrestler that injures everyone he gets in the ring with.

 

[Headman]

Another point I'd like to make is that being arrogant is not a gimmick, it's a character trait. A gimmick is dressing up like an Undertaker from the wild west or carrying around a 2x4 and an American Flagg. Million Dollar Man's gimmick was that he was a heartless millionaire who used his money to hurt or embarrass others. His money made him arrogant. Mr Perfect was a guy who was good at everything he did. He was arrogant to make people who may otherwise cheer for this gifted athlete hate his guts. If anything, the arrogant heel is really the only kind of heel. There's no such thing as a humble heel. Even the monster heels are arrogant which is usually how they get beat in the end. People usually don't like self centered, elitist snobs (Unless you're name is The Rock) so this is an attribute that all heels take on whether they come to the ring with a seven foot mirror or a painted face and smoking skull.

 

[Da Solo]

I feel like the OP is sort of making sense here, but then jumped out of the window with it.

Most heels these days are arrogant, that's just how it is. But that doesn't mean it's a GIMMICK. A gimmick means that you're all about something, and the kind of arrogance the OP is referring to seems more like a characteristic. Take Christian, for example. Is he arrogant? Yes. Is that his gimmick? No. It helps his persona out a bit (conspiracy vitcim, always falling short of World Titles, whiny), but that's not the essence of his gimmick.

Now here's the part where I agree with the OP: There are too many guys who are using arrogance as their whole image. Tyson Kidd, Bella Twins, Morrison's heel run, Dolph, the list goes on. Someone above mentioned a good point and pointed out how most old-school legends were simply arrogance (Mr. Perfect, Paul Orndoff, Every Horsemen, etc.), but A. Back in those days, it was do-able, as Wrestling was a lot less complicated/diverse and B. Those are a few out of many (I'm sure there are many from each of their respective era's who tried and failed that gimmick).

If you're going to use the pure arrogance gimmick, you need to work the living shit out of it (i.e. Y2J, Rock, and to a lesser extent MVP). Some of these guys you mentioned aren't pure arrogance as you say, but rather a tweak on it. Cody, for example, went from an exaggerated Rick Rude type of thing to a self-depreciating/borderline sadomasochistic to a pseudo-liberated psychopath with a superiority complex. Del-Rio is a re-hash of JBL, without the All-American image. This is the reason I feel Miz is overrated (tbh he seems like a poor-man's Jericho who every hopped on because he has some mic skills, but really he's just another pure-arrogance type, but that's another thread)

 

[cyhh2002]

Yep. It all started with Gorgeous George. Then it was followed by the likes of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, "Gorgeous" Jimmy Garvin, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, "The Narcissist" Lex Luger, "Sexy Boy" Shawn Michaels, "Handsome" Harley Race, "Adorable" Adrian Adonis, "Pretty" Paul Roma, "Luscious" Johnnie Stewart, "Pretty Boy" Scotty Riggs, "The Masterpiece" Chris Masters, "The Reflection of Perfection" Mark Jindrak, and "Dashing" Cody Rhodes. And let's not count out LayCool and the Beautiful People as well.

And not only that, many of them would admire themselves in the mirror before their matches.