10 Things WWE Suddenly Wanted You To Care About (After Programming You To Hate Them)
7. Curtis Axel
May 20, 2013, was the moment.
Starting that moment, from now, from that moment on, that was the moment, starting then, of the genesis of Curtis Axel, who WWE very ambitiously asked you to receive as a main event act from out of nowhere.
But you see, at that moment, the performer had changed his name. He was a new man, starting from that moment on, a man who, by adopting variations of his father and grandfather's names, was suddenly as good as they were!
Perfect!
Except it wasn't perfect, because the pitch so sudden and inelegant and insulting that nobody bought it. In a real careful-what-you-wish-for indictment of fan-casting, simply 'make Paul Heyman his mouthpiece!' did not work, in part because Triple H did such a sh*tty job of putting him over. Triple H had endured such a pounding at the hands of Brock Lesnar that he really shouldn't have taken the match. But, by God, you don't just chickensh*t out of a predetermined match. And it doesn't matter if your knee hurts so much that it has reduced you to tears. Triple H fought through a pec tear in Saudi Arabia, so you'll take that year on the shelf and f*cking like it. And trust Triple H to frame an uncommitted act of politicking as something heroic, Jesus wept.
The guy looked like he'd suffered sunstroke, which was the closest thing the dud Axel character ever got to heat.