10 WWE Joke Pushes That Stopped Being Funny
The day the laughter died
No Way Jose's post-WrestleMania debut somehow wasn't the most incongruous of the annual glut of NXT call-ups and main roster returns (Bobby Lashley's tepid comeback pop didn't actually arrive until he held Elias in a suplex for an ungodly amount of time), but the dancing fool found his cards marked despite his debut squash victory.
Jose was instantly the 'dancing fool', a persona that has waltzed down the aisle in WWE before and almost always failed. Given a conga-line to supersize his act from the NXT vintage wasn't going to help either - it didn't do much for another lousy call-up that'll feature later in this list and wasn't going to remove the distinct possibility he'd be jobbing to fellow barrel-scraper Mojo Rawley within three months.
This sort of push isn't isolated to a man more catchphrase than character, though. Everybody's a joke now. Well, not everybody, but it's easier to identify those that actually have a slither of meaningfulness about them. Braun Strowman takes no prisoners, Ronda Rousey takes no sh*t and Samoa Joe takes no time despatching those substantially below him on the pecking on SmackDown Live! Everyone else seems to take what they're given and run head first into a brick wall with it - geeks, dorks and losers alike.
Like the pained awkwardness of their over-long facial expression shots, WWE never know when to grab the hook and mercy kill a push or presentation long after it's already dead. That joke isn't funny anymore...
10. Hornswoggle
John Bradshaw Layfield flooring Hornswoggle with a hilarious garbage can throw at WrestleMania XXIV wasn't the first point the ludicrous leprechaun gag had been beaten into the ground.
The persona was four feet tall and six foot under a year earlier. Revealed as Vince McMahon's bastard offspring in a panicked rewrite following Mr Kennedy's loose-lipped implosion and wellness suspension during the company's problematic post-Benoit summer, Hornswoggle's occasionally enjoyable sidekick gimmick swallowed up hours of television time in chronic cartoon segments with McMahon and his idiot goons Jonathan Coachman and William Regal.
Once a 'Little B*stard' (that paid off, at least...) that 'lived' under the ring as an able assistant to Finlay, his child-friendly gimmick was a sh*t hit until the pops dropped. It was only after the ideas well ran dry that he gained such undue profile, linking up with D-Generation-X, Brodus Clay and The Three Man Band before a release that still came as a shock in 2016.