Miscast wrestlers

[Vegeta]

22 hours ago, gmoney said:

Tay Conti isn't a great babyface, but she's a rotten heel. Completely unnatural. 

I would say Anna Jay too, her as a heel she looks like she is proper forcing the heel act and the choking out thing, bet she is a lovely person in real life too, as heel she just looks so unbelievable and its being forced.

[CavemanLynn]

It's a shame Buddy Matthews doesn't 'get it' - he was excellent in Team BAMF in NXT, with a really solid basic set of moves (whiff) and stellar selling. But he revealed himself in his Session with Renee, when he talked about not understanding why having a great serious of wrestling matches with Mustafa Ali wasn't enough for him to get a push. For a guy with a great look, athleticism and technical skill, there really is nothing to him. A jacked Aussie with space age offence should be a snap to book, but he's reduced himself to just an indie guy in shredded shorts. Even when he had the opportunity to come in as something different, when he did the silly student film about his 'prison release' to tie him to Malakai Black, the lights came up and it was... just Buddy Murphy. No attempt to update his look try a new persona, or anything. In HoB's spoopy promos, you've got Malakai in face paint, Brody King in chains and bandanas, and... just Buddy Murphy.

HBK's 'boyhood dream' push looks weird, in hindsight. You've got Vince pushing him as a nice, determined kid finally achieving his childhood dream of becoming WWF champion, while HBK pumps and gyrates in stripper gear, or staggers around the houseshow loop in jeans and a cloud of cocaine.

You could probably lump a lot of the Attitude Era guys in here. Take Charles Wright - he did fine but awkward as Papa Shango and Kama Mustafa, but lit the place up as opening act The Godfather.

[Merzbow]

They've both got good futures but neither is ready to be on national TV with any sort of character, Anna especially could do with a New Japan style excursion to somewhere else for a year.

[BomberPat]

49 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Hulk Hogan as the Third Man. Hear me out.

Hogan turning heel was a great moment and absolutely the right thing for him in terms of career longevity and becoming more interesting for a bit. But very shortly he switched the whole dynamic of the Outsiders/nWo from the groundbreaking and unpredictable invasion to it being all about him, and Hall and Nash lost some of their cool by association. When the nWo are very shortly teasing adding the Nasty Boys and Beefcake, then actually adding Virgil, Million Dollar Man, IRS and Boss Man, it very much has the stink of “WWF retirement home” they were already accused of for pushing Hogan and (perhaps unfairly) Macho Man. And his first defences were Flair, Savage and 100 year old Roddy Piper. Pretty sure people tuning in for the nWo rivalry did it in spite of Hollywoods droning promos, and were mainly invested in the Wolfpack.

Completely agreed. Plug for future product, but in the book I've been working on, I make that exact argument - as shocking as the initial Hogan heel turn was, and how it probably kept the NWO ball rolling far longer than it would have done otherwise, Hogan joining really doomed the entire stable. He was still doing shouty '80s promos next to two guys were mostly calm and cool, and it very quickly turned into the same kind of jobs for the boys/"that doesn't work for me, brother" booking that Hogan's WCW babyface run had been, where he just got to knock around with his mates. It was the Dungeon of Doom in a cooler shirt.

[air_raid]

2 hours ago, Vegeta said:

I would say Anna Jay too, her as a heel she looks like she is proper forcing the heel act and the choking out thing, bet she is a lovely person in real life too, as heel she just looks so unbelievable and its being forced.

Actually lovely, or just “I’d love to sniff the exercise bike after her” lovely?

[Vegeta]

6 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Actually lovely, or just “I’d love to sniff the exercise bike after her” lovely?

She genuinely looks like she's a nice person, I just think heel is not what's best for her, just my opinion 

[Tommy!]

3 hours ago, air_raid said:

Hulk Hogan as the Third Man. Hear me out.

Hogan turning heel was a great moment and absolutely the right thing for him in terms of career longevity and becoming more interesting for a bit. But very shortly he switched the whole dynamic of the Outsiders/nWo from the groundbreaking and unpredictable invasion to it being all about him, and Hall and Nash lost some of their cool by association

While I don't disagree, and if I remember right it's said somewhere Nash or Hall felt much the same in the tail end of 96, if it wasn't him turning it still would have been all about him one way or another, because it's hogan. He'd be rolling over them by Fall Brawl. 

I always felt Perfect was a bad fit. It was stuffed full of duffers but  perfect was the one that felt out of place in the mix to me. 

[Pinc]

Seth Rollins is laughably miscast as charismatic wrestler Seth Rollins with the laugh and the coloured garb. Among the most actorly acts of any kind I’ve ever seen. Like Iain Lee unaccountably forced to do Lionel Blair’s gimmick against his will. He’s not characterful enough to be anything more than a white meat babyface in my eyes. And the cumulative decade-or-so of pushes as anything else has left him with a really weird legacy.

His original World Champion run as an apparently conniving heel was a misstep as well. That comeback promo where everyone was made up they’d finally get to just cheer the slightly awkward/boring guy with the pleasingly flashy offence, only for him to start dropping heel lines halfway through was illustrative. Hard to think of a single promo chilling a character’s momentum to such an extent. Whatever the opposite of a pipebomb is.

[air_raid]

On 1/18/2023 at 5:40 PM, RedRooster said:

Not Randy Orton, but Randy Orton as the kind of babyface they tried to have him portray in 2004. It was so very apparent very early on that it wasn't going to work.

 

On 1/18/2023 at 6:51 PM, DCW said:

Having a newly minted babyface spit in the face of the heel and then run away was never going to work. Orton's legs as face were done from the very start by Triple H.

Let me put my Fin Martin mask back on and go through this once more. The failure to launch Orton as the new babyface headliner was threefold. By having Evolution betray him and Triple H outsmart him so, they made him look stupid. By having him spit at Hunter and run off they made him look cowardly. By having him lose the belt to Hunter at the first opportunity, they made him look a loser. "Stupid, cowardly, loser" is not a good look for your new hero.

[Chris B]

I did it... for The Rock.

No wonder it didn't last.