When the main man Geno Mrosko asked “Seriously, what’s in the mystery crate?” on The Feed during Raw last night (Feb. 23), Greendayskaguy77 replied:
From what I have heard it’s Danhausen. He’s friends of CM Punk and it’s Chicago. They should know who he is
Cagesiders like Diam0nd_Joe, and JAREDah joined in to also guess the angle is leading to Danhausen, the very nice very evil wrestler who has described his gimmick as “Conan O’Brien possessed by a demon”, debuting at Elimination Chamber this weekend.
Donavan Danhausen (which is both his shoot name, and his first wrestling one) and Punk bonded during their time at AEW, and that Danhausen hasn’t been used by either of Tony Khan’s promotions in two years may have been the price he paid for friendship with the current WWE World Heavyweight champion.
A couple months back we got an updated timeline for Danhausen to hit free agency, which came along with rumors that WWE was divided internally on a performer who is very over with a subset of their core audience, but likely at least confusing if not outright unacceptable to another group of wrestling fans.
That does fit into another reason the “It’s Danhausen in the WWE Mystery Crate-hausen” theory makes a ton of sense: if WWE did decide to sign the 35-year-old from Detroit, the argument was probably won by Danhausen’s merchandise numbers. The possessed Pee Wee Herman-like manchild moved a ton of shirts and other collectibles on his own, without the TKO machine behind him. With them? Mr. Iguana and Uncle Howdy may have some competition.
And that’s another argument in favor of this theory. WWE’s got multiple places someone like Danhausen can fit in now, like AAA and NXT. He doesn’t need to be in serious angles on the main roster, and if they ever decide to try one, the Wyatt Sicks have proven WWE can keep a supernatural story somewhat self-contained now.
The one hole in this theory, which either started or picked up steam with this this X/Twitter post, btw…
… is that using premium live event time to do so seems like a major investment in Danhausen. But if they think they can immediately sell $1 million in plush teeth or something, I could still see them doing it. It probably won’t the most prominent product placement or marketing integration on Saturday’s PLE
Let us know what you think of the Danhausen/mystery crate theory below.
