For years, there was a wrestling urban legend that the original Ultimate Warrior died, and Vince McMahon replaced him with a lookalike. While that sounds pretty ridiculous in the internet era, you couldnt put it past the owner to do something like that...because hes done it before, and for some reason keeps doing it. Remember Sin Cara? No, not the guy currently playing the role who used to be Hunico, but the old one, Mistico. That guy was something else. He was high-flyer who botched a ton of moves, but was a huge star in Mexico and couldn't adjust to the WWE style. A failed experiment that was worth trying out. End of story, right? Out of nowhere, Sin Cara grew a couple inches taller, gained like 30 pounds, got a tattoo, and became slower in the ring. He actually looked exactly like the evil Sin Cara character. This is because he was the former evil Sin Cara! How about that terrible bullfighters gimmick currently on the roster? Why they look just like those Diego and Primo guys that disappeared. But why not just come up with a storyline saying they wanted to be bullfighters (which would still be dumb) instead of pretending that theyre new wrestlers (which is even dumber)? In the past, weve had multiple Doink the Clowns, a fake Diesel and Razor Ramon to name a few. Now, in the rare exception, like Husky Harris transforming into a Bray Wyatt, the old gimmick shouldnt be noted. But thats also WWEs fault for giving someone such an awful character in the first place. Otherwise, acknowledge whats clearly going on, and dont pretend like your fans cant tell the difference.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com