10 WWE Wrestlers You Can’t Believe Got Over
Silicone, silliness, and silver spoons.
We'd like to think the formula is simple.
Just turn Roman Reigns heel for a bit. It worked for The Rock. A heel run would allow Reigns to tap into his natural smugness, feed off the natural crowd dynamic, and unearth hitherto undiscovered potential as an organic act...even though his promos would still be scripted. Nobody buys Jason Jordan as Kurt Angle's son because we know, for a fact, that he isn't - even though Ethan Carter III got over with a similar, patently false bit in TNA. Stop booking Shinsuke Nakamura to talk all the time - just have him wrestle - even though there are already too many meaningless matches and rematches on WWE television.
Getting over often is simple. Fans like to see more of the wrestlers they like. It's a business fundamental to which pro wrestling isn't immune, even if, all too often, Vince McMahon is impervious to the wider, vocal sentiment of his fanbase.
But McMahon doesn't rule the wrestling world because he's an idiot. He sees things that we don't - and not just Jinder Mahal's nonexistent star potential...
10. The Authors Of Pain
In 2017, the true heels are those who fail to deliver a good match. The Authors of Pain, inexperienced and dangerous, were such failures just this time last year that they generated a type of heat worse than X-Pac circa 2001. Authors Heat wasn't "go away" heat so much as "What are they doing in the ring at all?" heat. They almost caved a jobber's face in after their Super Collider finisher which, mercifully, was consequently modified.
Moreover, Akam and Rezar symbolised a regression from the dynamic update on the southern tag formula The Revival and American Alpha made their own. They were already fighting a losing battle as the unwanted heirs to the throne of the Road Warriors. Ruining that awesome division was enough to doom them in the eyes of the fandom - until they just about hung in there with #DIY in a spate of minor classics, the momentum and confidence generated by which afforded them a great reaction against less heralded opponents in SAnitY at TakeOver: Brooklyn III.
They are now, incredibly, genuinely, over - and they almost there as pseudo babyfaces, if the Full Sail buzz carries over to Houston. They should split their royalties with #DIY for their next-level carry-jobs - but they're over, all the same.