wwe news [WWE News] Tensai Already A Flop?

Tensai Reportedly Deemed A Flop By WWE Officials, Possibly Being Repackaged

quote

Tensai failed to impress WWE officials in his pinfall victory over John Cena on the April 16 Raw SuperShow and was deemed "a flop" as a result. He was initially pegged to face Cena at both Over the Limit and No Way Out but his poor showing in the main event match led to his push being curtailed and Big Show taking his place. WWE also canceled plans for summer live events to be headlined by Tensai and Laurinaitis vs. Cena, instead the former Prince Albert with Big Show.

Tensai has already undergone character tweaks as he appeared sans robe, competed more aggressively and had his named modified with the past two weeks. More changes could be in the works as there was talk this past week of his character being repackaged.

Noticed the tweaks, didn't think anything of it, other than what I thought at the time, dropping the Lord from his name because Yoshi has been going nuts on Twitter about Tensai being fake Japanese, the Lord Tensai name itself being disrespectful to Japanese, etc etc.

They went about his gimmick wrong. He should have came out immediately and just acknowledged in a promo "I am formerly Albert, I left WWE to seek greater fame in Japan where I honed my craft. My Japanese name is Tensai, blah blah blah, I am back to bring destruction with me." But they tried to pretend he was Japanese and that he used to compete in WWE without ever acknowledging who he used to be. But audiences aren't stupid, "Albert" chants immediately came with his debut and just how ridiculous he looked out there, yeah, I can see why it flopped.

On a side note: I'm surprised I'm not reading how WWE has deemed the Ryback gimmick a flop too. Seriously, how *bleep*ing difficult is it to just have Skip come back and target former Nexus members, faulting them for his damn near two year injury? Heath Slater and Darren Young could have been jobbing out and actually doing something, especially Heath Slater. Granted Darren Young has had his own thing going on NXT and teaming with Titus, but Heath has nothing. It'd have been better to just job him out in a short feud instead of local nobodies. This could have led to Skip eventually going after David Otunga and being focused more in a storyline against Ace himself. Then Cena and Skip team together to take on Ace and Otunga and you're building a much bigger star before audiences instead of boring them with him beating nobodies every week. Maybe the Nexus angle wouldn't have worked so well with some of the original members injured (Justin Gabriel & Wade Barrett) and one being gone from WWE (Michael Tarver) but it's still better than this stupid ass Terminator gimmick they gave him.

I agree with what you said about Tensai and Ryback. It would have made a lot more sense if they'd totally acknowledged Tensai's past (but they rarely do that with anyone) instead of glossing over it. The fans saw right through it and haven't bought it, which is a shame because I think the concept of the gimmick is quite cool - it's much more interesting than "Generic Name" with a generic gimmick.

In Ryback's case they could have easily had him chase former Nexus members like you said but still be destroying jobbers at the same time. Have someone like Heath Slater at ringside while Ryback (or Sheffield) destroys jobbers and be like "Aww shit ". Instead there's absolutely no direction to his character

never liked Prince Albert or Albert or A-Train or Tensai never have been a fan of him. So i'm delighted to hear his latest gimmick is a miserable flop

Tensai hasn't been impressing me either. Still hoping for the possible Ryback vs Tensai feud to give these guys the push they both need right now.

Make a storyline; make something happen between these two.

I don't know, from what I've seen, he moved like a snail in Japan too.

HAD to do it.

They really shouldn't have given him that gimmick. It just doesn't fit right with him.

quote Slacker

Hip Hop Hippo would be the perfect partner for Brodus Clay.

That would have worked better.