He Was Ripping Off The Rock... Now He's Taking Over The World
Who amongst us has not shouted "YEAH-UH!" in agreement?
WWE's next top star was once something of a laughing stock in the niche wrestling fandom.
His supporters were adamant that he possessed genuine superstar potential, but it was hard to take seriously. Eli Drake was not boring. He could clearly talk. He could carry himself like a star. He was drenched in self-belief. He knew the game, too. He didn't come up with his now deafening call-and-response in WWE. He refined it years and years ago. He was equipped to get over long before he did.
"Carry himself like a star" is very fitting here because the rap on Drake is that he cosplayed having real, meaningful charisma. He has a great baritone and catchphrase, but then, so did Mr. Kennedy. The similarities between the two were evident, extending to a perfunctory if unexciting in-ring game, and fans had been burned before. His "Yeah-uh!" catchphrase was fun to echo, but then, so was Ryback's "Feed me more!". Even Percy Watson's "Oh yeah!" was a fun thing to do for a few weeks several years ago.
It was felt that Drake was the Wish version of a megastar, and that he very obviously modelled his schtick after the Rock (the cadence, the pauses) and Steve Austin (the waistcoat, the head movements) cast him as an arrogant or even outright delusional figure. It was at an absolute minimum highly ambitious. Of course he drew mockery.
Who did he think he was?
To those very few who paid attention to Impact Wrestling in the late 2010s, when the promotion faded from the radar as New Japan Pro Wrestling overtook it as the second most talked-about promotion in US fan circles, Eli Drake was an amusing act. He performed more than one naff comedy programme, and while his 'Fact Of Life' promo segment was amusing - he found a reason to call virtually everybody a "dummy" and sounded a buzzer to confirm that they were, in fact, a dummy - it wasn't main event material. A fun midcard bit not unlike Bad News Barrett with the hammer and the podium, it was funny prop comedy, but little more than that.
As fundamentally silly as it was, Drake proved himself a valuable asset.
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