What If WWE brings back the old personas of Superstars?
WrestleMania 35 saw an unlikely turn as John Cena made a surprise appearance to interrupt Elias. That development in and of itself might not have been so strange were it not for how Cena presented himself.
He wasn’t the grown-up version of himself influenced by Hollywood that we had come to know in recent years, nor was he portraying the kid-friendly goofy persona. Instead, Cena appeared in the rapping gimmick that he had first gotten himself noticed with, offering a fun and a highly offbeat throwback to over a decade before.
Cena is not the only wrestler to have worked in a different gimmick at a different point in his career. Most wrestlers have done it, whether it’s during their WWE tenures or back further to earlier times when they worked with smaller promotions. This article considers what might be if WWE were to have five different Superstars revisit past personas in today’s WWE.
#5. The Undertaker as The American Badass
One of WWE’s more frequently rumored character transitions in recent years — particularly around WrestleMania season — is that The Undertaker may come back in his biker persona from the Attitude Era, also known as the American Badass. It feels like a stretch in some ways, especially given the rumors that Vince McMahon personally detests this take on the gimmick that risked undermining The Dead Man’s more mystical persona.
However, by all indications, the biker version of the character is much closer to the real-life man beneath the gimmick’s actual identity. Given that he increasingly looks to be in the deep twilight of his in-ring career, it would make a fair amount of sense for him to let kayfabe slide and be himself a little more in all aspects of his on-air persona.
Perhaps most importantly, the quality of Undertaker matches has dropped off enough that the character could really use something special to regain some buzz in the short term if he is going to continue wrestling. A lot of fans from the early 2000s have a soft spot for the biker and bringing it back really could get them excited.