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.

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#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.

#4. The Usos as an old school Samoan act

When Jimmy and Jey Uso first debuted on the WWE main roster, they were not the hip and streetwise act they portray today, but rather a more old school Samoan team that harkened back to earlier generations of their family.

The Anoi’a family tree includes The Wild Samoans and The Headshrinkers. The Usos didn’t start out with quite the level of theatrics or cultural insensitivity of these older teams, but did dress more like that, and wrestled with a wild reckless abandon.

If the Usos were to revert to something closer to their old personas, it might feel a bit out of place in contemporary WWE. However, it could also be spun as the brothers tapping into their roots to take on a more violent edge against particularly stiff competition.

#3. Kane as Isaac Yankem DDS

Kane is one of WWE’s most iconic characters. After The Undertaker had already beaten the odds, surviving past the shelf life of most monster heels with supernatural gimmicks by lasting a decade - his spin-off character - little brother Kane, exceeded expectations as well.

While Kane would naturally be an opponent and partner who frequently orbited the Dead Man, the Big Red Machine enjoyed a distinguished career in his own right, including world title reigns and PPV main events that had nothing to do with The Undertaker.

The man behind the Kane character didn’t always seem like he was on a Hall of Fame path, though. Earlier on, he played a few different gimmicks for WWE, and most memorably - Jerry Lawler’s evil dentist, Isaac Yankem.

It wouldn’t make any sense at all for Yankem to return on a full-time basis. However, now that the real man is the mayor of Knox County, and well past his physical prime to boot, a one-off appearance in the dentist gimmick could be fun for a surprise berth in the Royal Rumble, an anniversary show or another nostalgic episode of weekly TV.

#2. Luke Gallows as Festus

It is easy enough to forget that Luke Gallows is still a part of the WWE roster. Despite their clear talent and past success in Japan, his tag team with Karl Anderson has struggled for most of its run with WWE and is now used sparingly on television.

This isn’t Gallows’s first WWE tenure, nor the first stretch when he has felt underutilized. He had a run earlier that saw him play CM Punk’s muscle in the Straight Edge Society, and before that, he portrayed a mentally challenged country boy named Festus.

While the personas that Gallows worked under in the past didn’t necessarily have huge success written all over them, Festus was at least offbeat and memorable. Revisiting the gimmick could offer a fun bit of nostalgia for die-hard fans, besides which there is arguably still some untapped potential in him as a poor man’s Eugene or, to see what would happen if he were to fall under heel influences.

#1. Ricochet as Prince Puma

WWE has a history of focusing on characters developed in house, including rebranding talents with big reputations from outside the company. Ricochet is one of those talents who got to hold onto a gimmick he had used in smaller promotions, but it wasn’t the only character he had played on less prominent stages. In Lucha Underground, he spent a period of time as the (masked) face of the company, Prince Puma.

It’s debatable whether there’s value in another masked man in WWE, or if Puma would inherently do better than the Ricochet character. However, after the high flyer’s tepid beginnings on the main roster, Prince Puma does feel as though he carries a bit more fire and gravitas, and thus greater potential to deliver on the performer’s unique gifts at the highest level.

Given Lucha Underground’s own protective tendencies over its intellectual property, this character change probably isn’t on the cards. Seeing Ricochet work under a hood again could, nonetheless, be interesting.