WWE’s Rosebush segments (starring Adam Rose) were a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it phenomenon in every sense.
First, they ran for only three weeks.
Second, each episode was just a minute long.
And third, if you’d kept your eyes open for those sixty seconds and forced yourself not to blink, it wouldn’t have made watching the segments any more unpleasant.
The story of the Rosebush began a year and a half earlier..
…when Leo Kruger was repackaged as Adam Rose. A foppish Russell Brand type who partied 24/7, Rose was a big hit on NXT.
Such a big hit, in fact, that WWE fast-tracked him to the main roster…
…where he languished.
It seems Rose’s whimsical antics, which played so well in a small arena with a recurring audience…
…fell flat with the larger WWE crowds.
That summer, WWE trotted out Adam and his entourage whenever there were products that needed placement.
By year’s end, the Exotic Express had run out of steam, and Adam began feuding with his own bunny.
From there, he became a party pooper…
…leading him to making a series of cryptic statements that went nowhere…
…before re-emerging as host of the Rosebush, a kayfabe gossip segment.
Truth be told, it was less a gossip segment and more a showcase of the worst sight gags the graphics department had to offer.
While WWE had a long history of dumb Photoshops…
…the Rosebush presented them with a — and there really is no better word for it — bitchiness lacking in most comedy segments.
Take the premiere episode, where Adam Rose lampooned Lana and Rusev’s engagement, six weeks after TMZ broke the story. The news may have been old, but the utter disdain Rose (or, more accurately, his boss) had for the couple was still fresh.
“Clearly, Rusev does not wear the pants in that relationship”, said Rose.
“He might, however, wear… the braaa!”
Adam Rose then shifted his razor-sharp wit to the other victims of that storyline, including Dolph Ziggler, who he implied was both promiscuous and bisexual.
Ziggler, Rose said, had “shared more beds than a used teddy bear”. So, more than two beds.
By the end of the segment, Dolph had somehow ended up with Rusev. It’s like they made the graphics first, then wrote a script around them.
And the scripts never improved. Every week, Rose would sign off with his motto:
“Remember: The dirt is always in bloom”
I’m no botanist, but I don’t think dirt is ever in bloom.
Why not say, “When the dirt is good, the Rosebush is always in bloom”? There, that took me ten seconds.
The following week, Rose showed off another dumb picture, this time of Neville as Dumbo.
You know, because of his big ears and nose and all?
This was rich coming from Adam Rose, who looked like he’d just walked out of a joke shop.
In the very same segment, he made Tommy Dreamer an Oompa Loompa because he’d shown up a little too tanned.
As a reminder, here was Adam’s boss, who okayed the pot-shots:
Rose then accused Dreamer of using Becky Lynch’s hair dye by mistake.
On episode three, Adam Rose denied a heelish Charlotte Flair was turning into her father…
…because, he said, she’d need sixteen world championships and four divorces to do that.
Well the joke’s on you, Adam. As of 2024, Charlotte is only two shy of Dad in each category.
Then it was back to Tommy Dreamer, this time coloring his face orange and calling him “the biological father of Sesame Street’s Ernie”.
Just say, “Ernie’s dad”, Adam. After all, brevity is the soul of wit.
Or better yet: Brevity’s wit’s soul.
Adam then made a crack about Tommy’s bald spot, though this was not as offensive as having two ponytails.
With all this Dreamer-bashing, you’d think this Rosebush nonsense would at least lead to a match with the Hardcore Icon…
…or anyone, really. Instead, the segment was quietly dropped before it could reach its fullest, crappy potential.
Adam Rose then got lumped in with the Social Outcasts…
…and now, it was Rose’s turn to endure bitchy comments, this time from Tough Enough winner Bronson Matthews…
…who called his jobber stable, jobbers. And got in trouble for it!
Maybe they should have given big Josh his own gossip show.