WWE Rumors: WWE planning de-push for a major superstar (exclusive)
What's the story?
With the wild card rule underway on both Raw and SmackDown Live, we've seen a lot of WWE Superstar receive a lot of airtime. Roman Reigns has constantly been on both shows, as has Kofi Kingston and, recently, Drew McIntyre. None more so than Shane McMahon of course.
Part of Shane McMahon's little family of helpers, which has recently included The Revival and Daniel Bryan, is Elias.
In case you didn't know...
Elias has been receiving a strong background push since his debut, with a typical segment involving him and his guitar taking place on every Monday Night Raw since that time, ending only with his move to SmackDown.
Sometimes, Elias has even been featured in multiple segments across multiple hours. In addition, Elias has had segments on a lot of different pay per views, even if he has no match scheduled.
WWE News sources have been open about the fact that exposure is intended to get Elias over and while this has by and large been successful it has failed to cross over into mainstream popularity. Elias' album was very quickly forgotten about. Live performances were planned but sold below expectations.
In what was described to me as a 'Hail Mary attempt', Elias was teamed up in segments with a number of WWE legends. These included Trish Stratus, Jeff Jarrett, and Road Dogg Jesse James.
The heart of the matter
Elias did appear on this week's WWE programming. He took a beating from Seth Rollins, then The Miz, Bobby Lashley, Cesaro, Ricochet, and Braun Strowman. It was not a good look for WWE's bard.
He recovered some momentum on SmackDown Live by being on the winning team of himself and McIntyre vs The Miz and R-Truth but it was McIntyre who was clearly made to look strong.
After inquiring as to whether this was an intentional moment of burial, I received quite a simple response. "The plan is to reduce Elias' air time a little. Things haven't really been working out and sometimes the best thing to do is just take him out of the spotlight and work things out."
Another source would later tell me: "Elias has been in very high profile positions. Unfortunately, it hasn't made him very high profile."
What's next?
I like Elias. His charisma and control of the crowd is The Rock level and that shows just how big he can be. It would be a great shame in my opinion if he was not given the chance to perform at his best level but with so much talent coming through from NXT and elsewhere, Elias is beset in all directions.
Hopefully, a feud with Finn Balor and an Intercontinental title run might be in his future but really, that's up to WWE.