10 WWE Wrestlers Whose Patriotism Limited Their Potential
A tired troupe that has never and never will work in WWE.
The character is the crux of any
successful Superstar in WWE, and without the right gimmick, a
wrestler may be doomed to fail. Fans tend to give WWE Creative flack
for some pretty awful ideas (and rightfully so) including Duke “The
Dumpster” Droese and Mantaur, among others. But when they get it
right, they get it really right, with The Undertaker being the most
obvious example.
But for as long as the company has been in existence, there has been one tired troupe of theirs that has yet to die: the classic evil foreigner.
It is a sound idea in theory to build up an anti-USA wrestler as one of the biggest heels on the roster, but once they run into that inevitable roadblock that is the Hulk Hogans or the John Cenas of the world (i.e. the all-American Superstars), they have nowhere to go but down.
Recently, Rusev was sent sprialling down the card following a gradual ascension and a subsequent feud with Cena that did him no favours. It was only after the Bulgarian brute reinvented himself that he was able to salvage his fledgling career.
Sadly, these ten wrestlers suffered a similar fate yet weren't as fortunate. It was their patriotism that ultimately prevented them from fulfilling their potential.
10. Kofi Kingston
Yes, there was indeed a time where Kofi Kingston was portrayed as a Jamaican stereotype, despite not having any roots to the country whatsoever. It didn't make sense to him. It didn't make sense to his fans. It didn't make sense to anyone, except for maybe Vince McMahon.
And even Vince, who signed off on the gimmick, referred to the vignettes hyping Kingston's debut on the ECW brand, which showed him walking around on a beach and saying there was “trouble in paradise”, as being “barely, barely passable". Yet he went through with it, anyway.
To his credit, Kingston owned the character the best he could, and you would have never known that his accent wasn't real. That said, it didn't help when the infamous Mike Adamle was constantly calling his matches with “Jamaican me crazy!” on commentary, and by then it was evident that he wouldn't get anywhere unless he dropped the fake Jamaican persona.
It wasn't until October 2009 that WWE finally began billing him from his native Ghana, and only a few weeks after that did they attempt to explain his lack of accent by having D-Generation members Triple H and Shawn Michaels call him out on it randomly on Raw.
He went on to win countless championships and is one-third of the WWE Tag Team champions as I write this, but he is worth mentioning on this list due to how of bad of a start he had as a result of his Jamaican character.