Death, taxes, and old wrestlers complaining about the modern television product. Usually, it is just noise. It is some veteran whose knees gave out in 1998 complaining that guys do too many flips today. But every once in a while, a veteran grabs a microphone and drops a completely undeniable truth bomb that exposes exactly what is wrong with the current booking strategy.
This week, it was Carlito. In a recent interview with WrestleTalk, the apple-spitting former United States Champion brought up a topic that drives me absolutely insane. He stated that the pre-debut vignette is a "lost art" in professional wrestling. He also openly admitted that his own iconic 2004 introduction was basically "ripping off" Razor Ramon.
And honestly? He is entirely correct on both counts. His blunt realization exposes a massive, glaring hole in how major promotions build their rosters in 2026.
The Razor Ramon Playbook
Let's address the Razor Ramon comparison first, because Carlito's self-awareness here is refreshing. Back in the summer of 2004, WWE started airing these incredible clips of Carlito Caribbean Cool. He was wandering around Puerto Rico, talking down to the locals, complaining about things not being cool, and spitting apple chunks into the faces of random bystanders.
It was arrogant. It was infuriating. It was perfect. As Carlito noted to WrestleTalk, he eventually realized they were just doing the Scott Hall gimmick. You can see the blueprint perfectly if you watch them back-to-back.
Switch out the beaches of Puerto Rico for the neon streets of Miami. Swap the apple for a toothpick. Change the accent. It is the exact same framework. A sleazy, overconfident jerk harassing regular people to establish his superiority before he ever steps into a ring.
But ripping off Razor Ramon is fine if you actually pull it off. Wrestling is built on recycling good ideas. Ric Flair lifted the Nature Boy gimmick from Buddy Rogers. Hulk Hogan took the superstar physique and promo style from Billy Graham. Execution is everything, and Carlito nailed it.
His debut worked flawlessly because of those vignettes. When he finally strolled out on SmackDown and challenged John Cena for the United States Championship on his very first night, the live crowd already hated his guts. They didn't need the commentators to explain why he was a bad guy. They had spent weeks watching him act like a totally entitled prick on their televisions. He had maximum heat before he even locked up.
The Epidemic of Lazy Debuts
Compare that to how wrestling operates today. We are exactly two days away from AEW Double or Nothing, and I am already dreading the inevitable surprise debut that has become the crutch of modern booking.
The industry standard for introducing a new wrestler in 2026 is intellectually bankrupt. It usually goes exactly like this. The arena lights randomly shut off. The crowd starts murmuring because they know the drill. A generic, copyright-free metal riff hits the PA system.
The lights flash back on, and there stands a guy in a black leather jacket with a serious scowl. The commentators immediately start screaming about how he was a champion in a promotion half the audience doesn't watch. The hardcore fans pop. The casual fans look at their phones. By the following Wednesday, the guy is cutting a completely generic promo in the ring and blending right into the mid-card soup.
Look at how AEW handled the arrival of Kazuchika Okada earlier this year, or Will Ospreay. They are two of the best bell-to-bell performers breathing oxygen today. But if you were a casual fan tuning into TBS on a Wednesday night, you were just expected to know who they were. The commentary team shouted about their star ratings in the Tokyo Dome, but nobody bothered to explain their actual motivations.
Why are they here? What do they want? Who are they as people? We never got a vignette establishing Okada's incredible, detached arrogance outside of a wrestling ring. We just got a guy in a nice suit showing up to hit a clothesline.
This isn't character building. It is a cheap sugar rush. You pop the crowd for thirty seconds based purely on the shock value of a surprise appearance, but you provide zero emotional foundation for the character moving forward. It feels great in the moment, but it leaves the audience starving an hour later.
Why Did We Stop Trying?
Why did companies abandon the vignette? Production costs are a lazy excuse. WWE and AEW have massive television budgets right now. They film cinematic matches and high-end video packages for pay-per-view main events. They have the cameras, the editing bays, and the money.
The real reason is impatience. Promoters today assume the audience already knows everything. They assume you read the dirt sheets, watch the Japanese promotions at four in the morning, and track contract expiration dates.
When a highly touted free agent signs, the company just wants to throw them on television immediately to pop a rating. They don't want to spend four weeks airing cryptic videos. They want instant gratification. But this completely alienates the casual viewer. If you don't know who a debuting wrestler is, a surprise run-in does absolutely nothing for you.
"A promotion will spend huge money acquiring a top-tier free agent, and then absolutely refuse to invest the required television time to explain why this person matters."
The Undertaker. Mankind. Goldust. The Wyatt Family. None of them arrived unannounced. They were carefully, deliberately introduced to the audience through weeks of unsettling, fascinating video packages. Bray Wyatt sitting in a rocking chair in a swamp told you exactly who he was. Val Venis filming adult movies told you exactly who he was. Mr. Perfect sinking impossible putts on a golf course told you everything you needed to know.
The Fear of Failure
There is also a cowardice in modern creative departments. Vignettes are risky. Sometimes they miss the mark completely. We all remember the disastrous Emmalina packages that aired for months, only for the character to debut and immediately revert to her old gimmick.
Or look back at the infamous Glacier buildup in WCW that cost a fortune and delivered a guy in sub-zero armor doing bad karate. When a vignette fails, it fails spectacularly and publicly. It is much safer for a writer to just say, 'Let's have him jump the babyface after the match.' It is safe, it is easy, and it is entirely forgettable.
WWE isn't immune to this either. Look at their NXT call-ups over the last two years. Triple H runs a developmental system in Florida that is essentially a character factory. They spend years teaching these kids how to talk to a camera, how to hit their marks, and how to project a persona.
But the second they get called up to Raw or SmackDown, all of that character work is seemingly thrown out the window. They just walk down the ramp to interrupt a mid-card match, have a three-minute squash, and disappear into catering for a month. We saw it with Carmelo Hayes. We saw it with Bron Breakker initially before they finally figured out he just needs to spear people through barricades. The lack of introductory storytelling creates an artificial ceiling on how big a star can truly become.
The Fix is So Simple
Carlito calling vignettes a "lost art" is a wake-up call. We have incredible athletes right now. The in-ring product is arguably faster, harder hitting, and more physically impressive than it was in 2004.
But the characters are flat. We have a roster full of guys whose entire personality is 'I wrestle very well.' That is not a gimmick. That is a job description. If Tony Khan or Paul Levesque want to build actual stars, they have to invest in them before the bell rings.
Take a camera crew out of the arena. Go shoot something in a bar, or an alley, or a mansion. Let a wrestler talk without screaming fans interrupting them. Establish a world for them to live in. Show us their motivations, their flaws, their sheer arrogance.
Wrestling needs fewer guys standing in the ring pointing at a WrestleMania sign, and more guys wandering around a beach spitting fruit at innocent tourists. Let's steal from Razor Ramon again. It works a hell of a lot better than turning the lights off for the fiftieth time this year.
