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Regardless of whether or not WWE paid off the Damien Mizdow gimmick and his feud with The Miz in a disappointing fashion (they did), I was looking forward to the next iteration of our former Intellectual Savior's career.
After it started with a heartfelt thank you to the fans, I was encouraged. When it morphed into parroting whoever he was near like an annoying eight year old, I was less enthused.
Now news has come from the last taping of Main Event (yes, they still film it for some international television contracts, even though you can't get it on WWE Network because of their deal with Sky in the United Kingdom) that Damien Sandow will be following in Curtis Axel's footsteps and using his impersonation skills to channel an 80s phenomena.
Behold...Macho Mandow...
GIFs courtesy of Sara-HHHBK on tumblr
This is undoubtedly better than just annoying Renee Young by repeating everything she says. It's less exciting than Axel's Hulk Hogan-esque gimmick, however, because as much as I love the Axe-man, he did need something to cover his charisma deficiency, and I don't think that's Sandow's problem. It would have been nice from Damien to get one more shot at getting over as a straight-forward wrestler before we went right back to the copycat well.
Plus, Jay Lethal set the bar pretty high for Randy Savage gimmick's with his Black Machismo character in TNA's early days.
However, you'd have to assume that Sandow, or, Mandow, won't play the character like Axel has. Curtis doesn't seem to notice that he's ripping off the Hulkster while he's ripping off his shirt. As a seasoned stunt double, Macho probably knows exactly what he's doing.
And debuting him against AxelMania isn't a coincidence, according to dirt screen reports. These two may feud for a while and then become an ironic MegaPowers team. The combination of Axel delusionally believing he's still in the Royal Rumble and ready to join the main event and Mandow practically winking to the audience through his act could be gold.
It's always weird when guys who seem to have the talent to do more get cast as comedians and/or enhancement talent. But presuming that they're not marks for themselves and really just got into pro wrestling to entertain us fans, it's hard to bemoan any opportunity that gives wrestlers more of a chance to do that.
What do you think? Will the cream rise to the the top tonight on Raw? And are you looking forward to WWE getting more Macho?