Hey Scott,
Around late October of 96 the character of Leif Cassidy seemed to shift from the dorky 70's teen idol to an unstable loose cannon. Towards the end of the New Rockers team Marty Jannetty was still acting over the top but Leif as a character did a complete 180 by growing the goatee and having a complete new look. Was there ever a reason given for the drastic change of the character?
Leif was a fantastic character and I wish WWE would have done more with him during that period.
I imagine it had to do with Paul Heyman taking him into ECW around that point, but I've never really heard of any official reasoning beyond Al Snow just kind of morphing into his real life personality.
Leif was a fantastic character?!
ReplyDeleteAbility to have a good match aside, Leif Cassidy was an awful name before it became an awful gimmick. Even wrestling straight without the goofy "out of touch hipster doofus" persona, you can't get past a stupid name that's a mash up of 70's relics I'm sure Vince thought were still hip.
ReplyDeleteParty on, Garth.
ReplyDeleteI doubt he thought they were hip, since they portrayed both Leif and Marty as goofy idiots.
ReplyDeleteI meant the name origin themselves and being relevant to modern pop culture. Standard "20 years behind the times" Vince.
ReplyDeleteI've often thought the same of Dolph Ziggler, although I think he came up with his own name.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to remember anything about that run outside of the really good TV match he had with Shawn
ReplyDeleteAl is on record of saying it was something that he did on his own over a month or so starting at house shows.
ReplyDeleteProbably watched behind the music and saw Leif Garrett and got the inspiration.
ReplyDeleteI completely boycotted the WWF and largely WCW in 1995-1996 until Hogan's heel turn. Looks like it was a wise decision. Man this was this just the apex of atrocious and beyond cartoonish crap gimmicks.
ReplyDeleteBased on Xavier's original "We don't ask...we take" promo when the group first formed, I think a heel group was definitely the original plan.
ReplyDeleteLeif's character transformation was all on Al as he was trying to convince people that he was legitimately losing it.
ReplyDeleteI hope New Day and/or the writers spend a lot of time watching Bret Hart during his "Canadian hero" phase because that is the character hook New Day right there: "we try to bring the positive but you people don't want the positive."
ReplyDeleteThey can probably afford it since they make 10 grand a week working from home.
ReplyDeleteI dunno...maybe it was because I was a young fan but I didn't mind 1995 and 1996. Sure, there was tons of crap but I also got to watch Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels in their primes.
ReplyDeleteExactly my feelings - Bret and Shawn outweighed a LOT of the bad, and some of the bad gimmicks were (IMO) fun and charming in their absurdity.
ReplyDeleteSame with me I still followed WWF back then but I knew it wasn't touching what WCW was doing at the time.
ReplyDeleteWas collectively 1995 WCW/WWF possibly the worst year of both companies combined?
ReplyDeleteSo much crap.
Dont be so crass adam!
ReplyDeleteHow to promote a new WWE Studio film : Have the The Miz (a heel) forcing the audience to watch the trailer as a heel move
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly a different tactic. But I guess it'd be weird to pretend like Miz is a great guy and we should love his movie all of a sudden.
ReplyDelete