Sometimes certain wrestlers have to fill roles within a roster to help make the show, programme or match card a complete experience for the fans. If WCW didn’t have jobbers on their roster or local enhancement talent to work with, then Goldberg would never have become the star and Hall of Famer he is today.
From top to bottom, whether one is the world champion of the show like AJ Styles or Kenny Omega or plays the comedic foil like Heath Slater or Toru Yano. Everyone has a purpose when it comes to the product, even if it is backstage or within the locker room and not in front of the cameras.
Some of them find high praise for their ability as wrestlers or to carry the business, others don’t get the same appreciation and love. This one is for the ten underrated players in Wrestling today.
Chase Owens is A Tag Team God!
New Japan’s running formula is to have interesting hard-hitting important contests backed in the undercard by a slew of tag team matches. This is so as to give their main players a break, partnering them with individuals not nearly over enough or rookie enough
Chase Owens is one such character that fills the ranks of the Bullet Club faction, much like Yoshi-Hashi does for CHAOS and Bushi for Los Ingobernables de Japon.
The difference is Owens is such a player that can partner with any other member of his faction for a lengthy tag team run. The result being the same, they’ll kill it as a team.
From Kenny Omega to Yujiro Takahashi, to now even Kota Ibushi; Owens has shown the tendency to gel with any of them and create some great chemistry. The instability of these partnerships and his positioning inevitably sees his team on the losing end, with Owens staring at the lights. Yet, underrated he stays simply because he crafts beautiful chemistry with just about anyone. The perfect partner through and through.
Petey Williams; the X-factor of the X Division
With new management comes an innovative product and an updated roster for Impact Wrestling. Let’s hope this one sticks because it’s the best one yet in ages. Among all this, is a division still in the throes of change and evolution. It harkens back to the past where the X Division wasn’t about weight limits, it had no limits.
Among the many new faces, one will be familiar for old TNA fans who have stuck around. That face is of the Canadian Destroyer, Petey Williams. The former Team Canada member comes in as a stalwart addition to the burgeoning X-Division in Impact Wrestling.
He brings a much-needed veteran presence to a show still searching for its identity, letting loose in the undercard by giving young upstarts a chance to take him down. In many ways, Williams plays the role that Chris Jericho has often done for WWE in the past. He’s willing to do the job, to ensure a better future for a company that truly deserves one.
Kassius Ohno is A Perfect Veteran Hand
Speaking of veterans, it seems doubtful that the former Chris Hero will ever make it to the WWE main roster. Perpetually stuck in NXT and for good reasons. Kassius Ohno has made a name for himself as the veteran gatekeeper for every new prospect that makes it to the Yellow brand.
Ohno frequently finds himself colliding with new forces either coming in from the independent circuit or just have found their footing at the Performance Centre. In many ways taking on the role of Coach-Player, Ohno is an understated element in a brand fast-moving away from being just about development.
Yet the main roster is the eventual goal. Ohno, well aware of his great skill but an inability to make it there is the perfect master for the young breed. Much like a teacher, Ohno prepares his students for the big bad world. He himself is stuck within the zone often forgotten but always the best and there to continue the cycle of breeding greatness.
King of Comedy
Comedy isn’t easy, especially in wrestling where every moment gets underlined by a layer of cheesiness. In WWE it doesn’t help that Vince McMahon has no understanding of how humor works. In New Japan, it has become a much simpler game thanks to just one individual.
Toru Yano is a comedic genius, he knows when to pull back and be serious and went to utilize his funny chops to rile up or entertain the fans. Yet the most important element of Yano’s arsenal is the how of its use.
In the G1 Climax, a character like Yano provides the perfect pause in a grueling tournament. On a general basis, his partnership with Tomohiro Ishii creates the perfect blend, as he plays the funny man to the often straight-faced stone cold pitbull Ishii. Either which way Yano is the best guy to make an event fun for viewers and wrestlers. He lets the tempo run smoothly and he doesn’t get enough love for it.
Reigning in the Locker Room
It isn’t always easy maintaining the peace in a locker room full of testosterone-pumped men, credit goes to Roman Reigns for being the new age locker room leader. Admittedly it’s a much easier job with a locker full of friends that do not require to ascertain their masculinity.
Instead, Reigns has inherited a very stable locker room, but one filled with not too much of a veteran presence nor a rookie atmosphere. As such being the always maligned face of the company, Reigns finds himself in a precarious position of unstable leadership.
The stories of the backstage atmosphere we hear are then a delight to behold. Roman knows when to put people in their place and when to motivate and inspire. Like him or not, there’s no denying Reigns flourishes as the leader of possibly the best pure talent roster WWE has seen in ages. If only they grasped what to really do with them.
Titus Taking WWE Worldwide
He’s a lower card wrestler who hasn’t been so treated by WWE, but Titus remains staunch showing what it means for him to do for his community. While Titus is far from a talent one might seek out for his matches or promos, he is prominent to WWE in the outside.
A company man through and through, Titus O’Neil presents the most interesting of individuals the WWE has. He is a father of young boys, does charity work of a wide variety and he is a minority and this matters.
Titus is representing the African-American community and doing for them as a part of the WWE. That is why his level-headed reaction to the Hulk Hogan incident gains prominence. That is why when he screens Black Panther for young African-American boys, it means something. Titus is a hero and we should know so.
No Flips, Just Fists
Even with Triple H at the helm, 205 Live still searches for an identity beyond a niche cruiserweight product. As simply a division on the main roster show, the cruiserweights are the alternative high-flying spectacle. Now part of a bigger parcel, the show requires certain characters and elements that make it a complete package.
The characters are coming out, but technically they’re all still the same. Picking a page out of the books of the Revival, Drew Gulak is a breath of fresh air in 205 live. The technical specimen changes the perception of cruiserweights.
He has taken an underseen rivalry with masked trios to a beloved cruiserweight champion to new heights, despite never going for the top rope. While 205 Live stars remain grounded within their own show or PPV’s, Gulak is changing the viewpoint and hopefully promoted but not exactly catching the praise for it.
An Invisible Glass Ceiling
Upper card gatekeepers are some of the most unappreciated workers in the now, but immensely beloved in retrospect. Take, for example, the greatest world champion that never was; Rowdy Roddy Piper.
In his heyday, Piper was the huge heel but never really climbed the mountaintop. Back then he gained appreciation but not the kind he has now. That type of wrestler is part of every company.
The greatest of them being none other than Tomohiro Ishii. Ishii (including Hirooki Goto and at one point Katsuyori Shibata as well) is a performer who is brilliant any given day, he is the king of the underrated. Set to challenge Omega for the IWGP World Championship, Ishii is going to give it his all but fall short.
Even then, he’s hovering just above the main event. Ishii can put anyone undeserving back in their place and elevate those that will be the future of New Japan.
The Real A-Lister
He might have disassociated himself (not completely) from WWE a long time ago, but The Rock for all the talk of him as the Dwayne Johnson will always be The Rock. Johnson the biggest Hollywood star today and a future presidential candidate can’t hide from his past, even if he wanted to.
The beautiful thing about the great one is that he doesn’t. The Rock fully embraces the love he has for the business utilizing it to spread the signal to the world at large. It is why Rock can still return and bring a mass of fans, with some sticking on for the new generation.
Rock has done enough for the business and even now with his outside pursuits, he does the same. He’s an A-Lister who isn’t really in the WWE, but it remains in him through and through; one can see this. You just wish fans of the business would give him that credit, that the Rock will finally always come back home.
The ELITE of the Indies
Yes, they are all over the wrestling business and news circuit. Yes, any and every wrestling fan is all in (pun intended) for the Young Bucks and largely the ELITE as well. Yet the question still remains if the love of fans for them purely as wrestlers is enough.
The current trajectory change we see in the face of Independent wrestling and in turn the WWE’s own evolution, somewhere its onus falls on the wrestlers. They are, after all, the endgame product any company wishes to sell audiences on.
Wrestlers like the Bucks, Kenny Omega and Cody have taken this value and turned it into a system for the man, by the man. No matter how many times we as individuals praise them for it, it just isn’t enough.
The big bad corporate world is an intimidating place, even in wrestling and the ELITE makes it just a bit better. They do so for unfortunate souls who put their bodies on the line by presenting them the lucrative deal the independent scene can become if they’re willing to hustle. Thank god they’ve changed wrestling, thank god they’ve saved wrestling.
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