10 Best Wrestling Gimmick Changes Of 2016
3. Brian Kendrick
Going into the 2016 WWE Cruiserweight Classic, a lot of people where happy to see Brian Kendrick on the brackets. A wildly talented performer, most remembered Brian Kendrick as either one half of a record-breaking tag team duo with Paul London or strutting around with Ezekial Jackson as The Brian Kendrick.
TNA fans might even remember him from a brief X-Division Championship run in 2011, where he portrayed a spaced-out hippy, or something along those lines. We'd also seen posts of him working as a trainer at the WWE Performance Center, so at best we expected him to return as a legend-type character.
Well, what we got instead was Post-Apocalyptic Scavenger Brian Kendrick, a man desperate to make something of his career and putting his best performances in the process. He was a changed man, and no matter how much we may have wanted to cheer him his character work was so strong that we couldn't.
By shedding the character fat, removing any trace of pretence and purely becoming a guy who knows his time is running out, Brian Kendrick has ironically given his career a true renaissance.