Heavy Machinery Gets Minor Name Change
WWE is back to shortening the names of their Superstars, and Otiz Dozovic and Tucker Knight became [...]
WWE is back to shortening the names of their Superstars, and Otiz Dozovic and Tucker Knight became the latest victims on Tuesday.
The two had their names shortened to Otis and Tucker on their WWE.com Superstar profile pages. Given that they were still called by their full names when they appeared on Monday Night Raw this week, the change appears to be very recent.
Heavy Machinery was announced as part of a six-star call-up from NXT back in December, but have showed up on both Raw and SmackDown in recent weeks as free agents. The two failed to earn a SmackDown Tag Team Championships title shot in a four-way elimination match with The Usos, The Bar and The New Day, then lost on the following Raw in another four-way with The B-Team, Lucha House Party and The Revival.
Recently WWE also changed the name of SmackDown Live Superstar Andrade "Cien" Almas down to just Andrade. Other wrestlers who have seen their names abbreviated in recent years include Sheaums, Cesaro, Elias, Big Cass, Harper and Rowan, TJP, Neville, Big E and Rusev.
The last of that group recently spoke with Lillian Garcia on an episode of her Chasing Glory Podcast about his frustration over his current booking, starting with the treatment of the United States Championship.
"It was the first championship I ever won. It hurts me because nobody cares about it," Rusev said. "It feels like I'm the only one that cares about the title. I wanted to make it bigger. I wanted to make it what it was back when I wrestled John Cena for it. But it seems like every time somebody else has it, nothing happens. Now that I've lost it, the title is probably going to get lost again. And I'm going to get lost probably too."
He also spoke about the break-up of the Rusev Day tag team, saying he had no idea why they split he and Lana apart from Aiden English.
"Who's to say? Management had different visions," he said. "We fought, we fought. If it ain't broke, there's nothing to fix.
"I think last year around WrestleMania and before that, the whole Rusev Day started and everything," he added. "I thought it was my time. I keep pushing and I keep talking to everybody and nobody wants to do anything."
WWE's next pay-per-view, Elimination Chamber, takes place on Feb. 17 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
