10 AEW Stars Who Desperately Need New Gimmicks

9. JD Drake

This entry comes from a place of love.

JD Drake is incredible, though you wouldn't necessarily know it from his AEW output. Not to dismiss the Wingmen, whose "waxed, vaxxed, and ready for a hot boy summer" schtick is fun enough for a heel jobber crew, but there's a chasm between those wacky characters and what Drake does best. Influenced by Arn Anderson and other territory hard-asses, the 'Blue Collar Badass' is a bruiser, not a jester, and while amusing in his deliberately ill-fitting Wingmen role, he is in a suboptimal gimmick belying his strengths as a performer.

AEW audiences have seen only flashes of what Drake does on the independents. Most recently, he stood up to Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson in their first tag outing, briefly matching William Regal's violent charges in their extended squash. This should serve as an appetiser for the entree to come.

Repackaged as his hard-nosed indie self, Drake would open many an eye in AEW. Better yet, bring in the excellent, underrated Anthony Henry, JD's WorkHorsemen partner, and let one of the best independent tag teams of the decade do their thing, with Drake as the sh*t-kicker and Henry the gleeful prick luxuriating in his own brutality.