Elias has been out of action ever since he was pulled from the King Of The Ring tournament in the summer due to a purported ankle injury. He’s been on the shelf since but posted a video last week proclaiming that a change was coming, teasing at his return.
On tonight’s edition of WWE SmackDown, Elias did indeed make his return, though to relatively little fanfare. Never the less, he was seen backstage, claiming to have come back from much soul searching, and teasing Drake Maverick over trying to steal a kiss from Dana Brooke.
You can see my original recap of this segment below:
Drake Maverick backstage tries to get Dana to kiss him with some mistletoe. She’s disgusted and asks if he’s married. Drake says it’s complicated. Elias strums his guitar behind them and pops up, saying he has been on a journey. Has a new song now. Elias is back calling Drake a Christmas Creeper and wonders how it’s gonna be when his wife finds out. Dana dances along with the song.
This is somewhat interesting if only because it seems to paint Elias as a babyface, given that he is mocking a heel, and the babyface Dana Brooke was dancing along with his music. This would certainly be in line with the change he promised.
While Elias has played defacto face for brief spurts before, due to how over his act tends to be with the audience, it never stuck. It’s a tricky thing because the gimmick everyone adores centers around him insulting the audience and their hometown in the form of song, as well as giving some biting put-downs to his opponents. This is something that could be played ironically ala AEW’s SCU, but that’s not the kind of thing that WWE typically does.
Nevertheless, atleast judging by this one segment, we may be seeing the Drifter’s first real babyface run here. We’ll see how well he can keep what’s made him special with this swap.
