10 Wrestlers Who Changed Their Perception In A Heartbeat
1. Tensai
Before:
Albert or whatever he went by was always a big unit who never grasped the performance element of wrestling - the "goddamn gaga" as Jim Cornette would put it. He grunted a lot, and was a convincing brawler when paired with the right (Chris Benoit) or most inexplicable (Kane) opponent, but he was never particularly charismatic, nor was he a great talker, and so he never made it in WWE under its preferred expositional soap opera format. He reinvented himself in Japan as as no-nonsense throwback monster and thrived, before the in-ring standard went positively apesh*t, as a spectacle who could go in singles but especially tags. Aura built and buzz generated, he ventured back to WWE, and...
In a heartbeat:
Maybe Hiroshi Tanahashi is just really, really good.
Lord Tensai was such an on-the-nose gimmick - did you know that spending some time professionally Japan will turn you into the most ancient Japanese man imaginable? - and it failed because everybody knew it was Albert, and expressed as much with that obnoxious drone-chant. They limited what Bernard did - he only mildly roughed people up, and did not f*ck them up - and he was basically just Albert in a goofy costume straight out of 1995 WCW.