Farewell, Damien Sandow

Oh, Damien Sandow, we hardly… well, we knew ye. But perhaps we didn’t know ye as much as we had wanted to.

When Damien Sandow was released by WWE this past Friday, it was something of a shocking denouement to his career with the company. The rest of the talent that had been let go that day was no great surprise; you had superstars who had announced their intent to leave WWE at their contract’s end anyway(Wade Barrett), superstars who were de facto retired due to injury (Santino Marella), superstars we hadn’t seen on Raw or Smackdown in months (Hornswoggle, Cameron), and superstars were just not relevant any longer (El Torito).

But Sandow… man, Sandow’s termination just felt different, didn’t it? As recently as twelve months ago, Sandow was receiving some of the biggest pops in the company. The Royal Rumble of 2015 and the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania 31 both featured moments for Sandow (then wrestling under the guise of Damien Mizdown, The Miz’ toadie and stunt double for his film career), and at both events, he received a groundswell of fan support. As a matter of fact, Mizdow’s entrance into the 2015 Rumble was the first time the fans had cheered for anything in that match since Daniel Bryan had been eliminated ten minutes beforehand. Even in the time since then, Sandow still received huge ovations in his limited television exposure. Just rewatch the Royal Rumble 2016 pre-show match where four tag teams battled it out to gain entry into the Rumble: Sandow, inexplicably thrown into a makeshift team with Darren Young, was the only man in the match that the audience cared for, and he was barely involved in it. Recently, he was used as enhancement talent for Baron Corbin, and the fans still clamored for him.

To be fair, it’s hard to quantify Damien Sandow’s popularity. He was hardly Bret Hart in the ring; he was certainly serviceable, no doubt, but he wasn’t going far on his workrate alone. He had a decent physical look with his height and intense eyes, but, well, he was no Roman Reigns of striking physiology. And yet, despite his shortcomings, he did manage make a connection with the WWE Universe, whether as an arrogant heel assured in his intellectual superiority or as mimic who copied the mannerisms and personalities of others or as a stunt double, a strange gimmick that Sandow took full ownership of and made the fans fall enamored of.

But since the stunt double gimmick ended (the finale of which was nothing more than a one-off match between himself and The Miz on Monday Night Raw—not on a pay-per-view—which The Miz won and rode that momentum to nowhere), Sandow’s appearances became few and far between. It felt like a direct callback to 2011 and the grassroots crowd support for Zack Ryder that went largely unnoticed by WWE. Ryder was another talent whose appeal was a surprise to WWE, and they proved just as unable to figure out how to take advantage of it.

Zack Ryder, at least, still has a career in WWE. And, hell, he recently won the Intercontinental title at Wrestlemania! At that rate of success, we were just three or four years away from Sandow’s big WrestleMania moment (I imagine instead of bringing his father into the ring to celebrate the achievement, Sandow would bring out The Miz, and they’d stand three feet apart and pretend to be hugging each other)… but nope. Instead, Sandow’s contract was terminated.

Now, I’m certainly not privy to the inner workings of WWE. It’s entirely possible that Sandow requested his release privately for either personal or professional reasons, and if that’s the case then hopefully Damien can make the most out of this and gets whatever he is looking for out of it. Maybe there was a backstage incident that created irreconcilable differences between the company and the man. This would be unfortunate, but not unheard of. But if it’s not a scenario akin to one of those? And WWE just let go of a superstar that their fans had proven they were hungry to see more of? Well, that’s just hard to figure out for a company that repeatedly claims to have their finger to their audience’s pulse.

Sandow never really moved onto anything after the stunt double gimmick ran its course. The fans dug him more than they ever had before that role started, but he just quietly slid into a babyface version of his previous heel intellectual character (well, there was a stopover with Curtis Axel to form a mock-up of The MegaPowers as The Macho Mandow and Curtis Axelmania or whatever, but this was little more than just throwing Sandow back into his impersonator role he had before he became Damien Mizdow). It’s unfathomable that WWE Creative could hear the reactions he was getting and think “Yeah, we don’t have anything for you to do, guy. Sorry”, but is it really that surprising? WWE’s creative, as handcuffed by Vince McMahon as they may be, have not proven to be able to set the world on fire with their ideas for the last several years, but come on. You’ve got to at least throw something out there. To not even give the guy a chance to try something? It’s inconceivable. Were they too busy plotting out Big Show’s next turn? Too focused on making sure The Uso’s have televised matches every week? How is a creative department or a corporate management who can’t even give a talented guy a chance what’s best for business?

And that’s really the situation we are stuck with: a creative team that has a hard time conceptualizing creative things for the talent on the roster to do. Other than “Boy, Roman Reigns sure is THE GUY, huh?” and “Boy, those whacky McMahons sure can’t get along, huh?”, what other stories are there in WWE these days? Baron Corbin is feuding with Dolph Ziggler, but there’s no reason for it. R-Truth wants to be friends with Goldust, but he hasn’t given a reason as to why. Everything feels like it’s been put together by watching a six-year old grab his two closest toys and smash them into each other. It’s happening because… well, it just is. Even the days of two superstars feuding over a shampoo commercial feels superior to this.

If Sandow tried something new, if he was given a new role and new merchandise to move, would he have succeeded? Well, nothing in life is guaranteed, and he may well have fallen flat on his face and started receiving crickets as a reaction, but given the pops he had been receiving from live audiences, it’s hard to imagine he couldn’t have brought in at least some money for the company. But you can’t very well be blamed for not moving the needle if you aren’t given a voice.

The “brass ring” is something we’ve all heard about, and it has become something of a joke with WWE fans. Sometimes, we say, no matter how hard you reach for the brass ring, WWE will keep pulling it further away because they just don’t want you to have it. But in the case of Damien Sandow, it felt like they wouldn’t even let him on the ride… and now he’s been flat-out removed from the park. Is the loss of a lower-card act we have barely seen in the last year a huge deal? No; the machine will keep chugging along with or without Damien Sandow in the mix. But what it signifies about WWE Creative? That is a bit more concerning.