WWE: Why Tensai Was a Waste of Time

A handful of WWE stars have returned or debuted over the last few months, all of them to varying degrees of success. 

There’s Christian, who immediately won the Intercontinental Championship. There’s Ryback, who’s destroyed every opponent in his path. There’s Damien Sandow, whose promos can only be translated with a thesaurus. 

Then, there’s Lord Tensai. 

The WWE began airing vignettes for the debut of Lord Tensai shortly before WrestleMania, and word had spread even before the first vignette aired that the man who would be portraying the character was Matthew Bloom. 

Wrestling fans who watched the WWE in the early 2000s knew Bloom as A-Train, Prince Albert or simply Albert, and this was very evident during Bloom’s first appearance under the Tensai character on the April 2^nd edition of Raw. 

The “Albert!” chants—though not very loud—could be heard throughout the arena during Tensai’s first match, when he easily squashed Alex Riley. 

They continued, too. 

Tensai continued to rack up victories on Raw over the next several weeks, beating Yoshi Tatsu, R-Truth and even John Cena in an Extreme Rules match in a Raw main event. 

But what got people talking wasn’t how impressive Tensai was. He actually wasn’t very impressive at all in any facet of his game. 

Rather, it was that Tensai’s new gimmick as a Japanese lord of sorts just didn’t work. 

The WWE announcers acknowledged that Tensai was indeed a former WWE star, but they tried to play it off as if the fans weren’t filling the arena with rather quiet chants of “Albert! Albert! Albert” 

Finally, Tensai’s WWE past as A-Train and Albert was acknowledged on WWE.com and then on TV, but by that point, it didn’t matter much. 

Call him Lord Tensai, A-Train, Prince Albert—call him whatever you want. The fans simply didn’t (and still don’t) care about Bloom, no matter what his name is. 

The WWE brass had to have recognized that the Lord Tensai character was not getting over, too. Anyone who heard the crickets in the arena every time Tensai stepped into it knew that Tensai’s push as a monster top heel was flopping not too long after it began. 

Yet, the creative team tried at first to get Bloom over. They booked him in Raw main events and even had him pin WWE Champion CM Punk in a two-on-one handicap match on the May 7^th Raw. 

Still, crickets. 

Tensai had seemingly been brought back to work with the WWE’s top baby faces like Randy Orton, Cena and Punk, and he did to an extent. 

But not even two months after Lord Tensai debuted in the WWE, he was already appearing on Superstars, the show where mid-carders go to die. He went from wrestling Cena in the Raw main event to squashing Riley again on a show that doesn’t even air on TV here in the United States. 

It only got worse for Lord Tensai, though. 

As he continued failing to get over with the crowd, the WWE dropped the “Lord” part of his name and did the same with his robe and mask, too. 

Lord Tensai became just “Tensai” on the May 21^st episode of Raw, and you could already see the makings of changes to his character. 

Here we are not even two and a half months into his current WWE run, and Tensai has changed his gimmick, had a stint on Superstars and already had his “undefeated” streak ended after losing to Cena on last week’s Raw. 

If those three things aren’t signs of failure, then I don’t know what is. 

Tensai hasn’t benefited the WWE in any way, even reportedly being deemed a flop by WWE officials and thus, being replaced by The Big Show in Raw’s main event feud with Cena. 

Of course, there’s no way that WWE officials could have known just how terrible the Tensai gimmick would be or how awful of a crowd reaction it would generate. 

But looking back at Tensai’s first 70 days in the company, there’s simply no other way to describe it: Tensai’s WWE run has been a complete waste of time. 

The WWE is no better off now than it was before Tensai debuted, and barring a minor miracle, that’s never going to change. 

Lord Tensai’s done, and Tensai should be, too.