15 Exact Moments Failed WWE Gimmicks Actually Got Over
How the Miz became awesome again, how Triple H did what Tony Khan could not.
When people talk about the WWE Attitude Era, they talk about how over everybody on the show was.
This isn’t strictly true - 1998 was plagued by dour cloggers, like the Disciples of Apocalypse, who couldn’t get a reaction if Jill Kelly walked them to the ring - but 2000 was wall-to-wall pops, more or less.
Whatever era we’re all calling this one now - ‘Renaissance’? ‘Paul Levesque’? ‘TKO’? - isn’t quite that. Triple H got the most important thing right: his main event scene is loaded with stars. He is a patient booker, too, and while “patient” is a euphemism in many ways, this approach has allowed WWE to tease and delay a match as huge as CM Punk Vs. Cody Rhodes for almost as long as possible.
His undercard, not so much loaded. Very few of his men’s tag teams are over. It’s just as well WWE has a mental stranglehold over the wrestlers who grew up watching it, because if they paid attention to the likes of Rusev, Ricky Saints, Rey Fenix, Blake Monroe and Royce Keys, they’d realise Triple H isn’t particularly good at getting ex-AEW acts over, either.
Triple H gets accused by certain critics of having inherited his most popular acts. Roman Reigns, Tribal Chief was a collaboration between Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman. Cody Rhodes was the last great feat of promotion Vince managed. CM Punk was never not going to be over.
This list will however demonstrate that Triple H - who was also accused of simply maintaining already popular wrestlers in the back half of his stint as NXT booker - is very much capable of a pivot. So is his old DX buddy Shawn Michaels…
15. Danhausen
In retrospect, Danhausen’s debut was perfect, even if WWE did not intentionally tell the story of a silly little guy who has no idea that he isn’t a megastar failing to present himself as a megastar. T
he lame magic act pyro was deliberate, and thus so was the anticlimax - but they expected a pop that was not forthcoming. Danhausen, in a less-than-ideal reminder of the Gobbledy Gooker, did not win the hearts of Chicago. The bit worked so well in hindsight because the respective general managers wanted nothing to do with the mystery box in which he was housed. Danhausen is an irritant. You aren’t meant to take him seriously - but you should doubt him at your peril. He earnestly won the hearts of WWE fans the very next night.
Danhausen is in fact a weird little guy, an odd one to unpack. If you see his material written down, the patter is lame. It’s the least funny Chris Jericho material from 1999 imaginable. And yet, when he says it, it’s weirdly endearing. 24 hours removed from Elimination Chamber, Danhausen ran into the Judgment Day on Raw. Dominik Mysterio was the perfect foil, and that’s when it clicked: WWE is teeming with the obnoxious heel variant, and all of them will play off Danhausen magnificently. Danhausen cursed Dominik Mysterio, and this is where it immediately felt like the bit wasn’t just going to work; it was going to be huge.
The pauses he added to “You - are - cursed!” were made for a booming call-and-response from the crowd, and in 2026 WWE, the less you do in the ring, the better. Danhausen is ideal.