Canadian faux-luchador and indy star El Generico (real name: Rami Sabei) is now wrestling for WWE's NXT as Sami Zayn. Zayn as Generico was an explosion of energy in the ring, a performer whose tongue-in-cheek gimmick was one of the more entertaining things in independent wrestling.
Zayn is an excellent in-ring performer, but it was the exuberance in which he played his ridiculous gimmick that made him stand out. Taking that away from him is like signing Will Ferrell to a movie and asking him not to do physical humor.
WWE has turned uninteresting wrestlers into memorable stars, but why go in the reverse direction? El Generico was a product that WWE couldn't trademark. It was a gimmick created outside of the WWE and apparently one WWE wasn't committed to continuing.
Claudio Castagnoli is a mouthful. Antonio Cesaro is a major upgrade. Transforming Windham Rotunda into the enigmatic Bray Wyatt is an example of improving a star's value by repackaging him. Going from Bryan Danielson to Daniel Bryan seemed unnecessary, just a sideways move, if any.
Turning El Generico into the unmasked Zayn sucks the fun out of his character and leaves a nondescript athletic wrestler in its stead.
El Generico would have been a great comic wrestler in the tradition of Hurricane Helms. He would have excelled in backstage segments or as an amusing addition to Raw or SmackDown's in-ring action.
To be fair, the answer for now is, we don't know. Fans haven't seen much of Zayn in his current form. Maybe the switch turns out fantastically. Maybe there's more evolution for him ahead.
It's at least clear from his first tweet that his sense of humor remains intact. Zayn challenged Phil Jackson as having the best first tweet ever.
For now, it appears that this move from masked to unmasked is an act of stubbornness. It punctures holes in the fun that was El Generico. We'll have to see how fans react to the new, more understated version of his gimmick.
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