Ranking All 29 WWE Returns And Debuts In 2022

17. Ezekiel/Elias

Cody Rhodes
WWE.com

We’ve got a 2-for-1 special on wrestling brothers here!

Elias disappeared from our screens in the summer of 2021, and vignettes aired signaling that he was ditching his drifter gimmick. But Elias never resurfaced. It wasn’t until the night after WrestleMania 38 that Ezekiel – Elias’ younger, cleanshaven brother – debuted. Kevin Owens made this silly gimmick work for a while, but by the summer, Ezekiel had run out of steam, and KO put him on the shelf that August.

Two months later, Elias returned, beard and all, putting the lookalike brother shtick to an end (for now). It was good, silly fun that was way more entertaining than it had any right to be, but it never was going to amount to much as a one-note joke.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.