It's odd to see, now a days in wrestling, a company pump up three unstoppable monsters. However, that's what WWE is doing now with Ryback, Lord Tensai, and Brodus Clay. From my experience, WWE of recent has had a poor record taking a character like these and moving them into legitimate feuds. And I don't believe these three have any better shot of moving up from where they are.
I chose the three based on the fact that they are undefeated (at least in their current character) and billed to be unstoppable. After le jump, I'll tackle each one by one and predict how and why WWE will screw it up.
Ryback: Of all three of these guys, he is the most prototypical monster to the jobbers. He hasn't had a real match yet (including a squashing of former Nexus mate Heath Slater) . All he's done is come out and kill people as someone watches it on the TV in the back.
Ryback has little going for him except for his squash push. The crowd doesn't seem to care (asides from their snarky chants of "Goldberg") and we can already see he has no personality. So how in the world will the WWE take him from wiping the mat with jobbers to his first legitimate feud. In short, I don't think they can successfully.
The biggest problem with Ryback is he can't talk. Harking back to his Skip Sheffield days, he was pretty bland and clueless on the microphone. And while decent wrestling can make for an entertaining match, a feud needs promos. A feud needs a mouth piece. Unfortunately for Ryback, WWE opted not to saddle him with a handler to do his talking for him. Even recently, the more successful monsters have had handlers who act as their mouth piece, such as Umaga's Armando Estrada (and Umaga was a pretty good monster) and Khali's Ranjin Singh (Khali suffered from brutal in ring skills and not Singh's promos.) But no manager for Ryback to give him that shot.
WWE can try to transition Ryback into a low card feud (hopefully as a heel) but without any mic skills outside of "Feed me more!" and "Shark amongst dolphins" and without any audience interest, it'll flop.
A quick point of note, I realize Goldberg was an unstoppable monster with no mouth piece and he flourished, but that was a different era of wrestling. WCW marketed him perfectly and the fan base was different back then. Plus he had more in ring charisma and intensity than Ryback. I do think that with today's business and audience, Goldberg wouldn't be as huge as he was in the 90s.
Lord Tensai: Tensai has the most high end wins in his brief run in the WWE, with wins over Punk and Cena. The way he's going, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a B PPV title shot in the future like they did with Koslov when he wasn't popular either. Not that the WWE should, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Again, he'll fail for the same reasons that Ryback will. The fans don't care and he doesn't speak. I honestly don't remember his mic skills as Prince Albert (though I do remember him piercing Val Venis). I don't know why the WWE got a random Asian guy who was a slave instead of one who would also promote for him.
If Johnny sticks around, and they use Albert has his primary henchman, maybe he has a shot. Then Johnny can work the microphone for him at least and bring him heat. However, even then, audience interest will only go so far.
Brodus Clay: I suppose I should start with a disclaimer. I was never a huge fan of Brodus Clay. At first I got a chuckle out of it all, but his success was really due to the catchiness of that damn song that isn't even new. But lately I groan seeing the disco ball knowing I have 5 minutes of him walking to the ring in my future.
But that aside, Clay is the further along in his squash development. While he still is undefeated, he has been beating the likes of the Miz, Zigs, and Swags (who are pretty much the higher paid jobbers at this point.) His mic skills aren't great, but they aren't horrid at the same time and fans do actually like him, which gives him the best shot.
I think a big monster who is also a good guy is always a difficult program to run since the good guy is usually billed as an underdog of sorts. So I don't see Brodus climbing much further up the ladder, though a B title run isn't out of the question. I'm sure he sells some merchandise and the kids get behind him so WWE may be content on just keeping him as he is.
If there were a stronger tag division, Brodus would actually be excellent as a partner of a smaller, almost cruiserweight size, wrestler who also dances. The tag division is a great place for a gimmick like Brodus', but unfortunately, the WWE's tag division isn't there.
OK, that's my rant on WWE's group of unbeaten big men. Let me know your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree. And if you have ideas that could make them succeed but WWE is too stupid to do, I'd definitely like to hear them.


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