One MIND-BLOWING Secret From Every WWE Royal Rumble

2012 - WHO Was Getting The Diesel Push?!

Brodus Clay was meant to debut as a big monster heel in early 2012.

This was no secret; WWE aired several vignettes on television teasing his arrival. It was generic fare - Brodus Clay vows no mercy against his foes, etc. - but this stuff went on for weeks, which half-made you think the guy would be presented as a big deal. Add to that the fact that he was very large, Vince-sized, and there was a tentative optimism surrounding the new character. This was 2011, remember, something you might recall as the “stop/start era”. Any push, any reason to actually engage with the product, would have sufficed back then.

Onscreen authority figure John Laurinaitis kept delaying the debut, which was odd, but taken by some as a way of building anticipation. All those dithering is just gonna piss the big feller off, leading to even more destruction!

Meltzer was thinking along these lines too, or was told, writing in the January 9 Observer “Brodus Clay, if he actually does start on TV this century, is being talked about as far as being the Kane/Nash monster who cleans the ring in this year’s Rumble”.

While it was nice that WWE seemed to care about a newish full-time wrestler for once, this seemed ambitious. Anybody who watched NXT knew that Clay, despite his mean face and impressive size, was somehow not remotely intimidating. He was bobbins in the ring even before the big guy standard was raised throughout the decade.

A shockingly prescient WWE seemed to grasp this; cutting out the obligatory half-push before the big lad became a novelty act, Clay was immediately presented as a prehistoric funk enthusiast nicknamed ‘the Funkasaurus’.