10 Wrestlers WWE Gave Up On In 2016
9. The Vaudevillains
Once one of NXT’s most popular acts, The Vaudevillains have been a complete flop on the main roster. Their olde timey strongmen gimmicks haven’t gotten over like they did in NXT’s smaller buildings, and they’ve been given few opportunities to show what they can do on the mic and in the ring. They’re below even The Ascension in SmackDown’s tag team hierarchy, which tells you all you need to know about WWE’s opinion of them.
It doesn’t help that Simon Gotch got himself involved in a backstage fight with Sin Cara, of course. That incident looks like the final nail in The Vaudevillains’ coffin, but their slide towards irrelevance started long before that. Gotch & Aiden English haven’t been used with any credibility since accidentally concussing Enzo Amore at Payback, and in all likelihood, they never will be again.
It’s a shame for Aiden English, who has done absolutely nothing wrong through all of this, but perhaps The Vaudevillains were doomed from the start. Their cartoony gimmick was fine in NXT’s carnival-like atmosphere, but it has died a death on the main roster. Repackaging them would mean stripping away the one thing that made them popular in the first place, but it might be their only hope.