Following WrestleMania 38, Elias made his big return to WWE programming, but instead of using his drifter gimmick he debuted as a new character named Ezekiel. The character claimed that he was the younger brother of Elias and he immediately kicked off a feud with Kevin Owens.
The gimmick change got a lot of people talking and during a Q&A session at For The Love of Wrestling the former Ezekiel explained how the gimmick came together.
“Yeah, that was a complete Vince McMahon idea. What had happened was, there was a period of time here where ‘The Boss’ really got into Elias and he said, ‘I want to make you the next guy.’ So he took the guitar away for a little while, and we said alright, we’re coming back, we’re gonna get a new look, new gear. As I did that, he was like, ‘Hey, let’s just go the whole way with it. Let’s clean up the hair, let’s shave the beard. We’ll give a whole new presentation.’ When I did that, it was like, oh, this is a whole different person. So you’re gonna be a different lesson. It’s like, ‘Okay, gotcha boss. What are you thinking.’ ‘Your own younger brother.’
You can imagine how I’m taking this as I’m hearing it. So it was his idea, he was very excited about it. When ‘The Boss’ is excited, you’re gonna be excited, you’re gonna be excited because it seems like some fun things could go down. My whole thing with wrestling and WWE is like, I’m always going to make the best of whatever situation I’m put in and hope the opportunities come and flow from that. So once ‘The Boss’ says okay, we’re gonna be Zeke, you’re gonna be that, you got it, boss. Now as soon as I get out there and show you what I can do with this, I want more opportunities to come. But that’s just kind of the attitude I took. Whatever you throw at me, I’m gonna try and make the best of it.”
Following Vince McMahon’s retirement in 2022 the Ezekiel character was written off TV, and eventually Elias was released from the company in September of 2023. He has since returned to the world of wrestling under the name Elijah.
H/T Fightful
