Lars Sullivan: The evolution of the WWE monster
Anyone who knows anything about wrestling and the WWE will tell you this. There's nothing more that gets Vince McMahon all eyes engorged out and salivated than a big beefy monster.
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To him wrestling is a spectacle, it's sports entertainment and nothing sells that type of grandeur than two ridiculously huge men duking it out. It's why he just needs the big beefy men to dominated his narrow-minded view of the squared circle.
There isn't a problem to this per se, except the fact that maybe sometimes Vince's monsters are just a bit too lumbering, brutish meatheads and nothing else. What would you expect after all?
Worse still even when they can do so much more, his company and creative have such a limited understanding of character nuance that they're often too reliant on cliches and tropes.
Even someone as currently successful as Braun Strowman is the destructive bull, either in a heroic fashion or a vicious horror movie villain version.
When there is depth brought in, it's often in terms of comedy. In the past, this meant over-relying on too many gags to embarrass the monster.
After all, it isn't funny if it isn't ironic, just take Big Show in sumo gear at Wrestlemania 21 for example.
At the same time, the comedy relies on tons of charisma and fans unbelievable appreciation of the performer to get it over and prevent it from becoming borderline ridiculous.
That is where the fast-rising Braun Strowman came in, able to sell the audience on his guitar schtick alongside Elias earlier this year.
The arc, therefore, makes it clear, heel or face there's a variety but a very limited one that monsters in WWE can hop from.
They can start off as the mindless brute either stalking the hallways alone (Snitsky), or one controlled by a manager (Umaga) or as a thug for a vaunted heel (Braun Strowman).
A babyface run often leads to equal parts of destructiveness and comedy. Some then leave the vacuum of this to return to just being plain old destructive.
They can't exactly dominate outright as villains or at least not for long, it takes away from the arc of the valiant hero. Somehow becoming a face and turning against the world including any authority figure, makes them even more impervious to losing.
After a point the heat is well and truly lose, case in point Braun Strowman.
This is where we come to an intriguing impasse, a monster unlike any other of course birthed from the bowels of the fascinating NXT Universe;
Lars Sullivan.
A monster entity soon to bring carnage to the main roster. It's clear from the vignettes WWE is playing to Sullivan's strengths as a beastly figure. It's also clear they're playing with their overused cliches, to present him as monstrous.
If we are to look at the track record especially between WWE and NXT, it is clear that the latter knows how to give an opportunity to the making of multifaceted individuals whereas the main roster will find these individuals summed up in a collective of descriptors and tropes.
There is a systematic place and label for each competitor in the main roster, it shackled them despite their best efforts to break out and truly become their own person. A recent example of this is Charlotte Flair.
Crafting a brilliant arc alongside Becky Lynch, Flair saw herself on the losing end. Lynch tapped into her own insecurities and the unfairness of the system to create a revolution.
Flair's arc while somewhat similar is about a prime level competitor dealt such a blow, self-doubt creeps in.
It did so violently at Survivor Series as the ugly Queen bee side of Charlotte Flair resurfaced and in fact exploded on Ronda Rousey. The magnitude cheers thrown away at the Queen where there was just apathy a few weeks back, showed WWE its trick worked.
One could argue however that it worked in the heat of the moment because Flair's actions towards it were organic, she reacted how she would. Her moment of retaliation felt true to her and nothing like the months earlier scene when Becky Lynch did the same to her.
Yet WWE doubled down on the superficial elements of what worked, propping Flair to act like Lynch, this past Tuesday, instead of the ravaging Queen we saw on Sunday. It killed any momentum for something that could have worked wonders. It still can though.
Basically, the decision to showcase Superstars in certain slots is what kills any form of character progress or creativity. Fear is there that with WWE management the same is to occur to someone like Lars Sullivan.
Sullivan is far more talented than the plethora of lumbering monsters that WWE trots out on a conveyor belt. Sullivan is distinctive as he is a few inches shy of the real gigantic monsters of old, yet he's not too small and agile for anything else.
Not only that Sullivan brings a dynamic to him in the ring, which only a few monsters share. He is, in fact, the very evolution of the kind of monster Braun Strowman is.
He can hold himself distinctively well on the mike, he's got an unbelievable arsenal of moves which Strowman lacks and more importantly he is a monster.
Yet he needn't be the typical WWE version of it. WWE should look to not its tropes and cliches all embezzled from the greatest piece of monster literature; Frankenstein, but another literary figure of ghastly proportions.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Mary Shelley's work has been a prime figure in horror literature and Frankenstein is a classic above all. Yet the fundamental parts that make Frankenstein's Monster work get transmutated by WWE into this mindless thug at times with a soft heart; the heel to face a turning point in wrestling's case. It is overdone.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, on the other hand, provides a fascinating twist on the Monster complex in WWE.
Sure we're not saying go all in with the hokey premise of the Robert Louis Stevenson's classic. It wouldn't work in today's age to have Sullivan turn from a genius refined man to a beastly monstrosity. WWE tried that a few years back and woefully so with Corporate and Demon Kane.
Instead, there's an intriguing mix they can utilize, one done so poetically by Mr. Hyde's successor in the Incredible Hulk. The brutish green Marvel hero is the ultimate example of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde adaptation.
While many may know him through the Marvel movies, most are unaware of his tragic and poignant comics history. Tons and tons of volumes depict the man and beast struggle in varied ways beyond the original concept.
One such way is that of 'The Professor', a Grey Hulk variant who's personas are merged into one. Not only did this create a powerful and furious beast like the Hulk, but also gave him the wit, cunning, and nigh level intellect of a Bruce Banner. It's the perfect combination.
This is the element that they should adopt for Lars Sullivan. There's no denying the one thing NXT also did wrong with him was not to tap into any character.
It's also true that Sullivan is better off comfortable portraying himself (or a heightened version at least) on-screen.
However, in the few shades that he has shown on NXT or outside of it, Lars Sullivan comes off as a genuinely ground and intelligible individual with a varied opinion on a lot of things. So it wouldn't be out of the realm to take him as a smart brute that could take out just about anyone.
This would give not only him a boost, but programming around him as well. It'd be an exciting taste to see a man who very few can tackles and corner including Braun Strowman, who has shown inconsistency with his smarts over his time.
So when whosoever conquers Sullivan will have done so not just by outliving him but actually outwitting him as well. That individual will skyrocket to the top.
Isn't that what monsters are best used for in the WWE?
To be put over so as they can put over somebody, with such a Lars Sullivan. WWE might have two mega stars on their hand and not just another hulking oaf lost in the wilderness of the companies creative cesspool.