The Exotic Express - The Potential of the Adam Rose experience
Raw seems to be on an NXT mode. Adam Rose was the latest arrival following the arrivals of Emma, Paige and Rusev this year. Bo Dallas is on his way too. Rose is an organizer of parties and he makes his entrance accompanied by his partygoers in a flourish of color and exuberance. This makes his character look quite carefree and quite inevitably the life of the party. It’s some sort of a carefree rebellion which can either take the WWE by storm or end up being on their comic relief segments. His entrance makes him look like a king but his gimmick is not too far away from the likes of Fandango, who does well as an arrogant dancer but the WWE stopped believing in him quite a while back even amounting to Triple H making a reference about this in one of his ‘reality era’ promos.
http://youtu.be/FqVGDAxiPLo
The birth name of the guy who plays Adam Rose is Ray Leppan. He is from South Africa and he entered the WWE as Leo Kruger. He was quite good at that too. If you watch his Kruger promos now, he might remind you of another NXT arrival who’s quite popular these days. It reminded me of Bray Wyatt. WWE surely believed in the Wyatt Family gimmick more and hence earlier this year Leo Kruger was gone. Gone forever. It was partytime in the WWE and Adam Rose came with his rosebuds to the ring. That entrance in NXT was spectacular. If that had happened on Raw, his character would have looked more promising. Leppan is playing that character with dedication and if you look at his days as Leo Kruger or flash forward to the present with him as Rose, you can see that these two character are just polar opposites and Leppan does a great job playing both of them. This just shows that Leppan is a good performer by WWE standards and surely very talented. And many of WWE’s top superstars can’t boast of themselves as even an average actor. Take the case of Orton, Cena and Bryan.
http://youtu.be/hDbbBVSabPQ
His former gimmick was not a failure. He did quite well for himself and was certainly a popular character on NXT. His new gimmick allows him to be fun too and the only criticism that paved his way on NXT was that his one match was identical to all of his matches but those were not strong criticisms as people actually found the presentation to be great and the performance to be great as well and that essentially made Rose look like a strong character. It also led to a ‘We Are Rosebuds’ chants from NXT’s audience. Now, if that happens in the WWE, it would be grand and nothing less than awesome. Renee Young did a great job on NXT of puttingRose over on commentary and she also joined the Exotic Express on Raw backstage. It’ll be great to see these two interact more on Raw as well.
This past Friday, Rose interrupted Swagger’s match against Zigger and this led to a Ziggler victory which was followed by Ziggler joining the Exotic Express in the ring. Now this moment can either look like something enthralling if the character becomes successful otherwise you know what the downside of it can be, right?
The Adam Rose Experience at NXT was just off the charts. He was called on to the main roster just a few weeks after his debut. That is testament enough that the character can and will do wonders if given the opportunity.
But WWE is a whole different arena. Gimmicks that look great on NXT need time to grow in the main roster. Even Wyatt had a disappointing feud with Kane before finding his feet on the roster.
Right now, Adam Rose looks like he has the potential to turn every sour lemon in the audience to Rosebuds. Only time will tell. But if that happens, the Exotic Express will be the one train to catch on to.