Triple H and his creative team have had this WWE star stuck in a rut for a while now.
The wrestler in question, Johnny Gargano, has been in an unfortunate position, to say the least, during his latest run in the company.
Gargano was in a tag team with Tommaso Ciampa called #DIY on SmackDown until Ciampa left WWE to join AEW, where he found singles success and became the TNT Champion.
This left Gargano without direction and has led to a storyline in which he lies down like a plank on a trunk at different areas backstage, accompanied by his wife Candice LeRae. The angle is attempting to show that Gargano is in depression after multiple losses and Ciampa leaving WWE. This angle was a collaborative effort by Gargano and the WWE creative team, who thought it would be funny if he lay around depressed in various places and people tried to revive him on TV.
Gargano last entered the ring to cut a promo on SmackDown a few months ago, claiming that he was motivated and wanted to go back to being Johnny Wrestling. He issued a challenge to anyone in the locker room, and to his disbelief, it was Oba Femi who answered the call. The Ruler squashed Gargano in a matter of seconds, sending him right back to planking.
Johnny Gargano’s storyline has neither been logical nor entertaining of late and is wearing thin, according to most people. It is high time Triple H and co. decided to do something different with his time on screen.
The WWE creative team can easily have Gargano as an active wrestler in the mid or lower mid-card, but instead they opted to use him as a motionless prop for people like Sami Zayn to talk to. Add to this Gargano's social media planking crossovers, and you have a disastrous dish.
Newly crowned WWE Champion CM Punk bumped into the pair backstage last Friday on SmackDown, and LeRae began to take jabs at Punk for becoming the Champion. She said that when Sami Zayn had the belt, he was supportive of people like her and Gargano and that there was hope for them, which isn’t the case with Punk as champion.
Punk’s retort was clear and concise. The Second City Saint even almost broke the fourth wall by saying that they needed to get off their backs and do something because whatever “this” was clearly wasn’t working.
This gave fans hope that the creative team will finally use this statement from Punk as motivation to change Gargano’s character on-screen and have him back in action, even if sporadically. The current depression storyline has also lost its novelty, unable to get fans laughing, even though Gargano has tried everything, like posting a social media picture of himself lying face down on a treadmill among other places.
One can hope that CM Punk’s recent statement changes things for Johnny Gargano and Candice LeRae in the weeks to come on SmackDown.
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