10 Things WWE Stole From The Indies
6. TJ Perkins' Gamer Gimmick
Few WWE Superstars have been as poorly used as TJ Perkins, who felt like a money-making babyface in the making after winning last summer's Cruiserweight Classic, but whose career went off a cliff as soon as he hit the main roster.
Much of this was down to the company's widescale burial of the 205lb division as a whole, but TJP was brutalised on a micro level too. Instead of letting Perkins be himself, WWE saddled him with a godawful gamer gimmick that saw him dress garishly, enter to what sounded like an old Sega Master System theme, and talk only in 'gamerspeak,' reciting lines like "you gotta level up, dude!" on a weekly basis.
The act was extremely similar to Kenny Omega's old gimmick. Long before he became the Bullet Club's 'Cleaner,' Omega himself was a 16-bit uber-geek who drew more influences from Mega Man and Street Fighter than his fellow wrestlers, but there's a key difference: Kenny made it work.
Omega's gamer persona was a perfect fit in Japan, where he made his name for promotions like DDT and AJPW while also building a sizeable cult following in the US, and he retains elements of it today. Perkins? He's lucky if he makes it to TV most weeks.