Former WWE Writer Reveals Ideas Pitched For Tensai, John Cena's Reaction To Feuding With Him

- Former WWE writer Kevin Eck has a new article on his "Eck Factor" blog revealing original plans for Jason "Tensai" Albert (Matt Bloom), who is now the head NXT trainer. You can read the full article at this link. He commented on ideas pitched for Tensai's return to WWE:

When Bloom returned to WWE a few years ago, the intention was to make him a main-event-level monster heel, and the creative team was assigned to come up with a character for him. Among the pitches for Bloom were for him to be a masked mauler, an ex-prisoner in an orange jumpsuit and an American samurai.

I was of the belief that the best option was to give him a cool-looking mask with black ring attire that showed the tattoos on his upper body but covered his ample midsection. The more we hide his identity, I thought, the less chance the crowd will be chanting "Albert" at him. I also thought he needed a mouthpiece, and my suggestion was to hire James Mitchell as his manager.

The samurai character was my least favorite. Of course, that's the one we went with. And instead of a manager, he was given a follower who never spoke English named Sakamoto.

The story line played off of Bloom's real-life experience of failing to make it big in WWE and then going to Japan and finding success there. The idea was that he embraced the samurai culture while in Japan and was now coming back to America to wreak havoc in the place where he was rejected years prior, WWE.

A bunch of names were tossed around for the character, with Tensai emerging as the winner. Then the discussion was whether to go with Lord Tensai or Master Tensai.

Eck also revealed that the plan was to "strap a rocket" to Tensai and have him main event SummerSlam against John Cena, which didn't happen. Eck says Cena was all for the feud and told creative that he welcomed the opportunity to get in the ring with "a big man who can work."

Source: The Eck Factor