10 Things WWE Could Learn From Kenta Kobashi's Career

3. Building Up A Wrestler's Return

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo7UsdQrGAM WWE has this habit of making wrestler€™s returns from injury as surprising as possible by not mentioning them at all in the run-up to it. In doing so, they€™re robbing themselves of the possibility to garner increased fan interest. Consider the following: Kenta Kobashi had to spend all of 2001 and part of 2002 on the shelf after extensive knee surgery. NOAH continued without him, but the promotion still showed videos of him in order to hype his return. They showed him rehabbing his legs, getting back into the ring, and training for his return. That way, when he did return in mid-2002, he received a standing ovation from the NOAH crowd, because they had seen just how badly he was injured, how much work he put into his return, and how much passion he had for wrestling. Imagine if WWE did that for one of their currently-injured wrestlers scheduled to return. The Usos appeared literally out of nowhere on RAW, when they could€™ve been built up to gain more fan excitement. Sami Zayn has been making appearances for EVOLVE, but little-to-nothing has been said about him on NXT. Itami€™s scheduled to return any day now, but we haven€™t learned anything about exactly when he€™ll be back, even though we want to see him back in an NXT ring ASAP. With WWE€™s videos being so good, it€™s amazing they don€™t do this enough as it is.