This made Sandow the second wrestler to fail to win a title upon cash-in (after Cena himself), and the first to lose a cash-in outright. "Forbes" wrote in 2016 that Sandow's 2012 intellectual character "quickly won over the fans and showed his potential as one of the top heels on the main roster", but his "career never recovered" from losing the Money in the Bank cash-in. Haddad later said, "I absolutely did think I was going to take that [next] big step" after his character won Money in the Bank, but "circumstances dictated otherwise". Despite being scripted to lose to Cena, Haddad was "very proud" that he delivered "a performance of a lifetime" that night. After Sandow's cash-in, he was noted to have become more generic as he stopped doing cartwheels and started wearing plain black ring attire. Sandow's misfortune continued when he challenged Intercontinental Champion Big E Langston to a title match at and lost. In January 2014, Sandow entered the 2014 Royal Rumble and was the first eliminated, courtesy of CM Punk. He then started a losing streak that lasted until May, which included him losing to the likes of Darren Young, being pinned in an eight-man tag match, and losing to Sin Cara in one minute. On the April 28 "Raw", Sandow dressed as Magneto to confront guest star Hugh Jackman (who plays Wolverine in the "X-Men" film series) and Dolph Ziggler, which resulted in Sandow being attacked by both Jackman and Ziggler. On the May 12 "Raw" and its pre-show, Sandow started delivering worked shoot comments displaying his apparent dissatisfaction at his position in WWE, resulting in his microphone being turned off. Sandow later made comments with allusions to being handcuffed. Sandow then transitioned into a comedic impersonator, and from May 20 he started to dress as a different character every week, sometimes wrestling as them. These characters included Sherlock Holmes, Bruce Springsteen, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, a rapper called D-Sizzle and an interpretive dancer. He also mimicked other wrestlers, such as Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, and Vince McMahon. Haddad reflected after his release that when he was "dressing up as someone new every week", "other guys said I should be doing something else", but back then he was willing to "go with it" to capture "attention", though he said, "I didn't know where or how it was going to end up".