Marcus wrote:does Ricochet have any semblance of mic skill at all? I've seen a few shoot interviews and he's a different kind of funny where the personality doesn't really match the in-ring. So are there mic skills there hidden behind the great in-ring work?
I've only ever seen him in Lucha Underground, outside of YouTube vids of his other matches lacking any context other than in-ring action. He didn't talk a whole lot in LU, but when he did, he seemed acceptable. Not good, but not terrible like some guys either.
I think what sets him apart from a guy like Crews, though, is that he bumps and sells like a goddamn champ, and guys love working with people who sell like Ricochet does. He makes everyone look better.
And at any rate, I don't think that Crews flopped specifically because he lacked character, but more because he wasn't kept in NXT long enough to find one. Look at Andrade Almas. If he had gotten called up last year after Wrestlemania, he'd probably be out of WWE right now. A year later, he's entering Smackdown as one of the hottest acts in NXT and the company in general. They kept him in NXT instead of calling him up without a plan and found a way to maximize his potential. Crews just never got that time, and he needed that time much more than a lot of other guys. The same goes for a guy like Corbin who will almost certainly never amount to anything because WWE jumped the gun and called him up long before he was ready. I'm not sure Corbin ever would have been ready, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to help him succeed.
Ricochet, on the other hand, will almost certainly be given the time in NXT to develop his skills outside the ring. I also think that, at worst, he's going to become the face of the cruiserweight division, at least so long as Triple H continues to run 205 Live. Now, maybe you still consider that flopping, but I think that's his worst case scenario.