3. Santino's Cobra Becomes Self-Aware
As a heel, Santino was a great, pesky mid-card character: he was fun to hate, and actually kind of funny. He had a fun gimmick going in the Honk-a-Meter where he tried to break the Honky Tonk Man's 64-week Intercontinental Title run. Ultimately, he came up quite a bit short, but then he turned babyface and quit trying. Santino kept a lot of the traits that made him a heel, but didn't really evolve as a character. Now that he was good, though, he was finally able to connect with his Cobra finisher. In the past, he would miss virtually every time, but now the ridiculous looking throat punch started knocking people out. To make things even worse, Santino pulled a Mick Foley and put a sock over his hand when dishing out the move. Somehow it got even worse. Much worse. The hand sock started to develop a mind of its own. Once the sock was on, Santino could no longer control it. Somehow, it even fell in love with Aksana. It was one of the worst storylines of the year, and seemed to never end. Santino was no longer fun to watch, he was painful. In 2013, the act continued and at one point, The Cobra was snake charmed by flutes that Jinder Mahal and The Great Khali were playing. It was awful and unforgivable. Whatever love Santino had from the hardcore fans is probably gone forever. Hopefully, he's sold enough of those merchandise socks to make up for it.
Andrew Soucek
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
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