Why Legacy are future superstars

Legacy have taken a lot of heat for being generic both inside and out of the ring. While it is true they have not fully developed characters, their ring work is actually quite distinct, each man with their own calling card, and their characters are on the backburner in favor of actual personalities. Each member of Legacy, while lackluster as a team, is developing into a future star outside of their immediate circumstances.

The internet might not have noticed, but Cody Rhodes gets massive heel heat. Ever since he didn’t defend his father, the beloved Dusty Rhodes, from Randy Orton, he’s been booed out of every building he’s been in. His whining promos just add to this and we may have the birth of the modern day Tully Blanchard. That’s high praise, but even the notoriously dense and move-focused internet has noticed that Cody is onto something in the ring. He’s mixing old-school wrestling and heel tactics with a good pace to put on some consistently very good matches, even when being crushed by Triple H.

Ted Dibiase is a future superstar. I’ve rarely been as wrong about someone as I was about Teddy, but the man has flat-out face-charisma. Fans want to cheer him and Teddy, for his part, is doing everything right to get them behind him just enough. His character arch is that of the rich kid learning to stand on his own two feet, so while he’s being slowly beaten and worn down by Orton, he’s also slowly learning to get back up every time. His in-ring work plays this up subtly and wonderfully. Ted sells like a face. What this means, in effect, is that, as a heel, his job is to sell everything faces to like it’s incredibly powerful, a punch lays him flat on his back, where he remains for a moment or so too long to show fans just how impressive the faces are. Ted doesn’t do that as a heel, which makes him a poor heel, but sets up his impending turn quite well. What Ted does, is when he sells, he immediately rolls to his hip and looks like he’s struggling to get up. This struggle creates an unconscious sympathy within the fans due to the willingness Ted shows to continually fight back. Moreover, both Ted’s selling and offense are everything someone like John Cena’s isn’t- Ted is all about being believable. From his simple punches to his selling of exhaustion in how he moves, Ted is quickly becoming among the more “real” workers in the WWE, just like his father was 20-years back.

Legacy are certainly a poor team. Ted and Cody simply don’t mix as a duo with one a pure heel and one a pure face. To further their problems with getting over, their characters are being built subtly, instead of in broad stokes, which goes against how the WWE usually does things and, as such, isn’t as noticed. Of course, with future main event guys, like with Evolution and even CM Punk, subtle is exactly what the WWE does. The group, further keeping them out of the spotlight until the right time job fairly often and have developed no signature spots. All that means is that a win streak and two signature high spots makes them immediately “arrive” in a way they wouldn’t with more even booking and those spots get over. With that, the turn will be imminent and two of the WWE’s brightest new stars will shine.