10 Worst WWE Gimmicks Of 2017
Sons of Apathy.
2016 was difficult to beat in the brainless gimmicks department.
It was the year in which WWE attempted to make the never-great Darren Young 'Great Again' with the assistance of demented life coach Bob Backlund, some mystifying, wooden vignettes, and a massively halfhearted push. Those vignettes were incredibly weird; Backlund raged against smart phone technology, for some reason, and note-taking. Backlund also instructed Young to "cut way down on the shopping" and to "walk briskly," instead of running, unless maybe he missed a bus. This was avant garde Adult Swim anti-comedy of the weirdest order, though unintentionally so. The whole thing was probably designed to make fun of Backlund's latter-day insanity, a joke that wore thin during the Attitude Era.
2016 also heralded the arrival of the Shining Stars - Puerto Rican time share salesmen! - who tried to sell time shares backstage in thoroughly baffling segments. David Lynch at his most insane was more comprehensible than this.
This was sh*t-thrown-at-walls stuff for the deadest of undercard acts.
2017, somehow, was worse - in that performers with genuine star potential were subjected to stuff as bad...
10. "Face Of America" Kevin Owens
The newly shaven, suited-and-booted Kevin Owens, having wrested the United States Championship from Chris Jericho, fancied himself as 'The New Face of America' in the springtime. The Hart Foundation circa 1997, it was not. Well, it might have been. It was quickly shelved in early summer when it became apparent how needless it was.
The idea - if you can stretch to that descriptor, given that it was hardly inventive - wasn't just derivative of wrestling's passé past. It was also derivative of its present; Owens was one of three anti-American heels on the one SmackDown brand, alongside Jinder Mahal and Rusev. Astonishingly, given Rusev's used toy status and Mahal's general being, Owens was the one ordered to drop the act.
It wasn't terrible - it was just completely beneath a performer of his creativity. His discomforting passive aggressive behaviour towards Michael Cole was far more effective in conveying him as complete a*sehole. The subversion of John Cena's U.S. Open Challenge was a neat touch, given how well-remembered the original was - but alas, we never bore witness to the conclusion of the arc.
He was probably pencilled in to job to Cena, actually, so every cloud.