Yeah, that's one of the main issues I have with Cole at this point--his UNhype.
It was a cute idea to try out a heel PBP guy on the Road to Wrestlemania last year. That's not a bad time to try some radical experiment like that, since that's when people are gonna watch regardless, and typically WM is when established stars shine the most, so viewers need less "guidance." I have no real problem with that. But by WM it was obvious that the experiment had failed, and they should have cut bait right then and there with Lawler squashing Cole and humbling him back to his old self.
But yet here we are a full year into the experiment now, and still Cole lingers, telling us how awful everything is except for the top heels. I'm sure WWE thinks that's just an alternative way of getting the top guys over--people hate Cole and thus will love what he hates. Some problems with that:
1.) It worked for Daniel Bryan on NXT (and ONLY on NXT), and it has never worked since.
2.) Even if it does work, it adds an extra step to the process. Instead of "announcer says this is great, it must be great," it adds the extra step of "announcer says this is awful, I don't like announcer, it must be great." AT BEST it needlessly complicates the process to get the same result at the cost of having to listen to someone you hate all night.
3.) The biggest problem WWE has right now is attracting new viewers to become fans of new wrestlers. Every show is someone's first show, so exposition is always necessary to ease a new viewer in (a concept WWE in general excels with and TNA sometimes stumbles with). New viewers don't know that Cole is supposed to be an idiot and that when he says something sucks you're supposed to like it. Thus new viewers are either misguided or confused or both, and likely won't come back.
It just boggles my mind that WWE has stuck with this character this long.
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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