This week's episodes of WWE Raw and Smackdown have come and gone with nary a peep from Brodus Clay. Indeed, The Funkasaurus from Planet Funk who is funky hasn't been seen or heard from in weeks thanks to a mandate from company big wig Vince McMahon.
Clay took to Twitter not long ago to say rumors of his demise have been greatly exaggerated but that didn't lead to his reappearance like must of us hoped it would. Instead he's still riding the pine, apparently doomed to locker room purgatory for reasons that are still unclear, though it was initially reported he was "too green."
In his latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required), Dave Meltzer attempts to clear up some of the confusion:
The actual story on Brodus Clay is that Vince McMahon thought he was too unsafe and reckless a worker and doesn't want him out there until he's safer to work with. We don't know if this was something agents told Vince, he came up with watching on his own, or guys who worked with Clay complained to Vince about. There were eyebrows raised about Vince being strong on this issue in trying to protect talent safety and then this past week's Raw putting Henry, Rhodes and to a lesser extent Kingston in television matches when two of the three had no business being out there, and the third was pretty banged up as well.
It's almost funny to hear that McMahon supposedly wanted to put an emphasis on safety so he ripped Clay off Raw and then in consecutive weeks a fellow big man, Big Show, was involved in the match that saw Randy Orton suffer a concussion and a battle royal that's come to be known as "The Battle Royal of Doom" for all the injuries stemming from it, including Wade Barrett having suffered a left elbow dislocation.
Despite all that, Show worked the live Smackdown last night in a match against Mark Henry, a guy who is already suffering from multiple injuries and shouldn't even be working right now.
So we can look at this in one of a few ways:
- Vince has it out for Clay: This doesn't make much sense but we don't really have the necessary information to back it up. Our best guess would be that he was given a crappy throwaway gimmick that was supposed to die and he got it over, which you would think is a good thing but all too often in WWE is not.
- Vince actually is trying to protect wrestlers: Big Show is a veteran with a better track record and Clay is still considered a young guy who hasn't been made by WWE, so that's how that can be explained. Then again, there's a big difference between working stiff with Heath Slater and Tyler Reks and being a big part of why Randy Orton, Wade Barrett, Dolph Ziggler and R-Truth are hurt.
- Politics: This seems to be the option that makes the most sense to me because here's a guy who's getting over with a cheap gimmick just by squashing guys and performing a few dance moves. That's sure to piss off guys who feel like they've been working a lot harder and paid their dues in the business. It's silly to you and me but it's certainly not that way in the locker room.
- Meltzer is being fed bad info: I suppose it's possible someone is feeding Meltzer bad information to make WWE look better after this spate of recent injuries.
Any of you Cagesiders agree with one of the four options above? Or do you have a theory of your own to explain why Clay still hasn't made his way back into our lives?