>>16450173It's quite post-modern when you think about it. He opens with "knock knock" and you expect this to be another whimsical WWE gimmick, after all ECW by then was no longer really extreme. And Estrada plays his part in setting it up by asking who's there. But now the twist comes. Normally you would say something like "orange," that sets up your second punny response but instead he just says his name. Not just that but he then threatens Estrada by telling him he's going to "knock your brains out." No pun and threats of horrific violence, our expectations have been thoroughly subverted. What we expect from a knock knock joke, from this tame and not-at-all extreme version of ECW... it's all been turned on its head. Mr. Walker tells us that he's no nonsense, that he's not here to joke or play games and that he's a very dangerous man; that underneath the girth and behind that simple twang lies a darkness and a penchant for violence, even cruelty. He's Braden Walker and he's going to knock your brains out... and he's here.
It's no wonder that this gimmick failed. It was too smart for the average fan and too intense for the audience that WWE had cultivated during the Cena era. In our current age of Wyatt Sick6es and Final Testaments perhaps it might have been something but not so in the era of the cartoonish childishness of 2008.
