WWE's Odd Option to Unmask and Rename El Generico

WWE hasn't only stripped off El Generico's mask, but by repackaging him, the business has devalued him. 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 a surge of power in the ring, a musician whose tongue-in-cheek device was one of the more entertaining things in independent wrestling. WWE has made a decision to transform him into something else, something more, for a lack of an improved term, simple. Gone is the mask. Gone is the fake Spanish he spoke. Gone, for the most part, would be the "Ole!" chants. Sami Zayn retweeted this photo of himself, exposing his new look. Zayn is a wonderful in-ring singer, however it was the exuberance by which he enjoyed his absurd device that made him stand out. Getting that from him is like signing Will Ferrell to a movie and asking him not to do physical humor. Except WWE has anything outstanding in the works for Zayn, this is apparently a foolish move. WWE has turned uninteresting wrestlers in to wonderful stars, but why get in the reverse direction? El Generico was something that WWE couldn't logo. It had been a trick produced not in the WWE and seemingly one WWE wasn't committed to continuing. El Generico's mighty fun entry. What'll Sami Zayn's be like? Many times, WWE has made both exceptional and puzzling options in renaming and rebranding wrestlers. Claudio Castagnoli is just a mouthful. Antonio Cesaro is a major upgrade. Changing Windham Rotunda to the enigmatic Bray Wyatt is definitely an example of enhancing a star's price by repackaging him. If any, going from Bryan Danielson to Daniel Bryan seemed unnecessary, just a sideways shift. How is Kassius Ohno much better than Joe Hero? Why mess with that name at all? Turning El Generico to the unmasked Zayn hurts the fun out of his character and leaves a nondescript running wrestler in its stead. El Generico would have been an excellent comic wrestler in the tradition of Hurricane Helms. He'd have excelled in backstage pieces or being an entertaining addition to Raw or SmackDown's in-ring activity. What does Sami Zayn offer? The clear answer for now is, we don't know, to be fair. Fans have not seen a lot of Zayn in his current form. Maybe the switch works out extremely. Maybe there's more evolution for him ahead. It is at the least apparent from his first tweet that his spontaneity remains unchanged. Zayn pushed Phil Jackson as obtaining the most readily useful first twitter actually. For the time being, it appears this move from bad to unmasked can be an act of stubbornness. It punctures holes in the fun which was El Generico. We'll need to see how fans react to the brand new, more elegant version of his trick. Zayn has an entertaining heritage to call home up toa'his own.