Scott Hall wrote:
Balor really is perfectly suited for NJPW which is predominantly all about work rate he just doesn't have the
mic skills and charisma to be the guy in WWE and if he isn't dressed up like a zombie he looks pretty ordinary.
A lot of the English/Irish/Scottish wrestlers are hurt by their accents which makes them hard to understand
sometimes and hurts their promo abilities. I saw that Noam Doar guy is back and when he talks you almost
need subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
On one hand the United Kingdom is one of the wrestling hot beds in the world if not the biggest they LOVE wrestling
there but when I see the UK wrestlers or watch a bit of NXT UK they lack the "cool factor" that's the forgotten key
ingredient in wrestling. North America has it, Japan has it, Mexico has it the UK scene doesn't.
Balor is quite popular with the women and has remained over despite status quo booking. Again it's a case of the WWE only seeing weaknesses in people not suited to their "formula" and not booking to someone's strengths. Balor has a great bod, is a decent worker and has a grin that could be either charming or irritating. That's a strength, by the way.
The inability of the WWE to handle an increasingly global roster and an increasingly plugged in audience is one of the factors why they have struggled to maintain their audience. It's not like these foreign guys don't have fans. During early 2018 they were featuring more people outside of the US than ever before and the ratings were actually UP for a few months. So there is an audience out there for a global feel. The problem is that internally they cannot or will not adapt. There are ways to get around accents, language, hell people offer suggestions every day. If in kayfabe the WWE is an international sport, and you hire international performers, then you have to be ready to treat it like an international show.
Another problem is the current WWE crowds, which are no longer representative of the mainstream zeitgeist. They chant things that were popular 20 years ago, they cheer for people who may appeal to a small subset of longtime fans but not to a larger demographic. So they send the company mixed signals as to who they should push that would actually be good for business. They can't find the sweet spot between what's good for business and what will satisfy the smarks, who, by the way, are probably already gone at this point so the WWE audience is mostly made up of WWE loyalists and AE nostalgists.
