10 Small WWE Character Tweaks That Became DISASTERS!
WWE trying new things is understandable, but some of these changes were unforgivable!
Hindsight is a wonderful luxury.
It enables everyone to look back on things WWE tried knowing what happened next, but nobody had a clue how things would pan out in the heat of the moment before having a go on TV. That softens the blow on excusing experimentation, but...good lord, some of the ideas mapped out here should've come with giant red flags attached.
Sex addicts, multi-millionaires losing their bearings financially out of nowhere, unrealistic hard men being portrayed as the kind who'd maul competition in UFC, bullies becoming the bullied? What were WWE bosses thinking with some of this stuff?! Someone behind the scenes needed to suggest that maybe (just maybe) fans would find it tough to swallow what was being pitched in these creative meetings.
A big ol' red pen should've gone through some of these plans before they leapt off sheets of paper onto episodes of Raw and SmackDown. It didn't though, and that gives us fans a chance to pinpoint exactly why these WWE character tweaks went on to become outright disasters.
Someone wants to pick a fight about it...
10. Aleister Black Wants You To Pick A Fight
Or, maybe he'd rather you forgot about this miserably interminable episode.
AEW's Malakai Black must've been excited when he was called up to WWE's main roster in 2019 as Aleister Black. He had the world at his feet, and (following a brief stint in a tag-team with fellow ex-NXT'er Ricochet), it honestly seemed like Black would go from strength to strength. Then, this directionless crap happened.
Aleister cut some fine-enough promos putting himself over as a dangerous customer nobody wanted to mess with. His parting line for each? Either, 'Who wants to pick a fight with me?' or, 'Someone will pick a fight with me'. Words to that effect. This was cool at first, but it went on and on and on and on for months without much payoff.
The endless loop WWE placed Black in definitely hurt his aura. Even something menacing and initially impressive can become tedious and yawn-worthy if it drones on long enough without anything really happening. Vince McMahon needed to make his mind up on Aleister; was he going to make a splash, or was he just going to live out the "definition of insanity" he repeated in those promos?
Sadly, it was the latter.