10 Embarrassing NXT-Era Creative Failures You Totally Forgot About
2. Alex Riley: RAGE
The absolute state of the image above.
It may look like the kind of pseudo-'deep' b*llocks your angst-ridden teenage cousin made for his Livejournal in the early 2000s, but no. Alex Riley, grown man, willingly posted this during an early-2015 Twitter explosion designed to show just how angry and pissed-off he was that The Man was holding him down, man. This resulted in the dopy #FreeRiley campaign, creating one of the most cringe-worthy undermined/held back gimmicks this promotion has ever seen.
Riley's 'Rage' was the drizzling sh*ts. Returning to the ring after a not-terrible stint on commentary, The Miz's former protege began a storyline in which he was bullied by Kevin Owens, yielding two matches in which he was rightly battered by the 'Prizefighter.' The horrific butt-rock entrance track fit the character perfectly. Every bit as dated, tryhard-ish, and corny as the man himself, listening to it in 2018 invokes the spirit of a man way out of his depth.
Alex even stepped to KO on Twitter:-
.@FightOwensFight u might be right, if u are, I’ll see YA in 10 yrs when I pull up to Mobile and u ask me, if I want regular or unleaded
Owens' Response?
@AlexRileyWWE They're the same, you idiot.
Ouch.
Bodied online and off, 'Rage' was injured after a few weeks. He'd return with scraggly long hair and a beard (to show you how intense he is) in early 2016, but was out of the promotion just a few months later, the big dork.