10 Disastrous Wrestling Debuts
6. Lord Tensai
The Lord Tensai gimmick was notoriously dire - but it half-made sense, conceptually.
As Giant Bernard, Matt Bloom had reinvented himself in the East, transitioning from unwieldy, heat-less big man to agile, white-hot behemoth. He was dripping with critical acclaim, and was formidable of aura, when he returned to WWE on the April 2, 2012 edition of Monday Night RAW.
WWE played on his New Japan Pro Wrestling exploits...by repackaging him as Hakushi 2.0, in a risible example of Flanderisation. Fans had to infer his puroresu success by viewing him through a hilariously narrow lens. Instead, seeing right through the stereotype and the man behind it, they showered him with droning chants of "Albert!". He was visibly shaken by the reaction - so much so that, as he stalked the ring ahead of his match with Alex Riley, he looked lost. Pitiful, even.
This was in stark contrast to the manner in which Brock Lesnar - who also made his return to WWE on the night, compromising Tensai by comparison - surveyed John Cena. Ultra-intense, he circled Cena like a predator.
Tensai was expected to tussle with CM Punk over the spring and summer months - John Laurinaitis referenced Tensai's name by forecasting "dark clouds" for Punk's future earlier on the show - but his aura and appeal had been diluted, irrevocably, in just over an hour.