How WWE Is Secretly Building The Next Face Of The Company
There are certain wrestlers, almost as select a few as the face of WWE, whose work elicits a certain response within the fan. They can summon a sort of crazed bloodlust through the visceral nastiness and intensity of their work. That famous Kurt Angle crowd appeal, in which he removed the straps from his singlet and screamed like a murderous lunatic with his full mouth showing?
Like Angle himself, Julius has that ability to make you go apesh*t in your living room, to whoop and holler and in that moment forget you're watching a predetermined, fictional scene. Julius makes you want to watch people get badly hurt. He turns people into a flesh-craving animal.
Brutus is a fantastic prospect as well, but Julius, realistically, is taller. He is a billed 6' 3". He is, and this is important, a from-scratch Performance Center project. WWE revealed the NIL programme a few months after Creed debuted, and while many scoffed at yet another continuation of WWE's "You don't have to be a non-wrestler to work here, but it helps" initiative, he is proof of concept. Bryan Danielson echoed the sentiments of many when he said WWE really only likes to push "their guys" - he'd know, given how winding his journey was - and Julius is their guy. This will count for a lot; it always has. Things won't be different under Triple H, even if he likes, say, Tommaso Ciampa more than Vince ever would. Ahead of NXT arRival, Triple H said of prospective signings from the indie circuit: "We want you to run our playbook".
Over time, the Creeds refined their act and evolved into babyfaces. Julius himself has evolved into a positively awesome wrecking machine all the more effective at picking his spots. That is in the strictest definition of the word, too. It's not a synonym of excellent. Julius Creed inspires awe. He picked a motherf*cker of a spot during a recent, superb cage match against Jagger Reid and Rip Fowler - one of the best WWE matches of the year - in which he somehow contrived to hit Reid with a one-armed power bomb. Reid deserved more credit than he received for his bravery and agility, but the core strength on the part of Julius was phenomenal. It's the sort of thing that enchants children when they watch. It's the sort of thing that turns adults into children when they watch.
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