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Top 10 Embarrassing Gimmicks You Forgot These Current - Part 1
10 AJ STYLES “NATURE BOY”: Nowadays, it’s not unheard of to say that AJ Styles is the greatest professional wrestler gracing God’s Green Earth. Night after night, he puts on astounding matches with anybody they put in his way.
Seriously, that dude was even able to get two solid matches out of Jinder Mahal. But let’s take look back to before Styles was living up to his “Phenomenal” nickname. Let’s look at a particular dark period in the career of the “Face that Runs the Place.” The year was 2010, TNA was trying desperately to get noticed and had hired the recently retired Ric Fliar.
They thought it would be a great idea to pair up their biggest homegrown standout with the 16-time world champion. Wearing fancy robes and strutting his way to the ring, Styles began to dress and act like the Nature Boy.
The biggest problem was their characters never matched. Styles didn’t excel as an ersatz Flair. He’s always been better as an incredible technician who gets the job done in the ring. Styles doesn’t “style” nor does he “profile.”.
9 KANE “CHRISTMAS CREATURE”: Kane is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. I like the guy so much that I was through the roof with excitement when he absolutely annihilated Finn Balor a few weeks ago. I would love for the Big Red Machine to get one final run on top as Universal Champion. Yeah, there’s something wrong with me.
I understand that and I’m trying to do better. He’s seen his share of stinker gimmicks in his career, especially during his early years in the WWF when he portrayed both the deranged dentist Isaac Yankem, DDS and Fake Diesel.
Since we all know about those, let’s examine a character not only worse, but one that’s seemingly been lost to the annals of time. It was December of 1992 and Kane was less than a year into the wrestling business when he debuted for the USWA as Christmas Creature, a festive yuletide monster.
The Devil’s Favorite Demon was dressed as Lord Humungous meets Road Hog’s Rudolph skin from Overwatch. Before being fed to Jerry the King Lawler, the Creature debuted against Trey Keller in a squash match that showed Kane’s skills were even greener than his outfit.
8 JOHN CENA “JUAN CENA”: “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if John Cena wrestled under a luchador mask and we called him ‘Juan Cena?’ Better try it out on a house show to make sure it works.
Oh, it was garbage, unfunny, a vaguely racist? Let’s never mention it again.” That is how I like to believe the entire Juan Cena debacle went down.
What makes this particularly bad is its relation to Cena’s storyline at the time. You see, Cena was embroiled in a lengthily feud with Wade Barrett and the Nexus that resulted in Cena being fired from the WWE.
After John Cena gave farewell speech on Monday Night Raw, his Mexican cousin Juan wrestled at a house show later that week. Juan wore his American cousin’s wardrobe, albeit with an added purple and yellow luchador mask to really drive the point home.
Realizing the gimmick was pointless and nowhere near as good as Dusty Rhode’s Midnight Rider, WWE abandoned the character, and good ol’ John Cena returned less than a week later, simultaneously destroying the character of Juan and the Nexus feud.
7 BARRY WINDHAM “THE STALKER”: Barry Windham has had a storied career as a professional wrestler.
The 6-foot-4, 275 pounder from Sweetwater, Texas is a former NWA World Heavyweight Champion, Television Champion, two-time WWF World Tag Team Champion, and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as a member of the legendary Four Horsemen. He was one of the best all around wrestlers of the late 80s and early 90s.
One story I’m sure he would love to never be told again, would be the time he was known simply as “The Stalker.” Dressing in camouflage with the faceprint to match and billed from simply “The Environment,” Windham would cut promos in the wild that made Skinner seem threatening.
The gimmick was a dud, and left the big man mostly unnoticed. In the end, Windham failed to reclaim any semblance of his former glory. Maybe the camo worked a little too well.
6 JIM NEIDHART “WHO”: To say Vince McMahon’s sense of humor is dated would be an overstatement. The billionaire still believes Daffy Duck’s catchphrase “suffering succotash” is not only topical, but humorous as well. It should come to no surprise that, during the 90s Vince was on a big Abbott and Costello kick.
Based on the idea of, “wouldn’t it be hilarious if we were able to do ‘Who’s on First’ during a wrestling match,” that character “Who” was born.
The wrestler given the opportunity to portray such a groundbreaking character? Jim Neidhart, of course. The Anvil exchanged his classic black and pink singlet for some very yellow briefs and a generic luchador mask.
The matches, which were usually squashes in his opponents favor, were only designed so that McMahon and Jerry Lawler could stumble their way through the 50-plus-year-old comedy routine. And stumble they did. The duo could hardly keep their composure while calling Who’s matches. Woof. Jobbing is easy, comedy is hard.
5 ALICIA FOX “HOMEWRECKING WEDDING PLANNER”: Alicia Fox is one of the longest tenured women on WWE’s roster. Her career has surprisingly spanned nearly a decade.
Her character has seen a lot of tweaks during her time on the main roster, most of them would be considered more bland than anything else. We would have to say it was her first gimmick that is particularly embarrassing.
She first debuted as Vickie Guerrero and Edge’s wedding planner when the power couple was about to tie the knot. During the ceremony (because these things NEVER end well), Triple H had revealed that Edge was cheating on his Fiancé with Foxy.
The thing that makes this iteration of Alicia’s character lame is that she was merely used as a plot device and not an actual character with depth. It wasn’t until she began having on camera meltdowns, destroying everything in her path following a loss that she began to click with the audience.
4 LUKE GALLOWS “THE FREAKIN’ DEACON”: I was originally intending to use tis entry to talk about the one match Luke Gallows had as the abysmal Fake Kane. The character had one truly terrible match against the real Kane and even managed to beat the Big Red Monster before the entire plot was abandoned the following evening.
However, there is another, maybe even stranger character that Gallows had portrayed. Back when he was just starting out wrestling in WWE developmental system, Deep South Wrestling, Luke Gallows was known as The Freakin’ Deacon. If you thought his match as Kane was bad, imagine him with one less year of training under his belt.
The character was a stark, raving lunatic who wore too much mascara, had an over-the-top horseshoe hair cut, wore tattered clothes, and carried around a spider named Willow to the ring with him.
The Deacon seemed like he could have been the long lost son of Damien Demento, which is not a comparison anyone should strive for. 3 RAVEN “JOHNNY POLO”: Scott Levy has always has a great mind for the wrestling business.
His stint in ECW as Raven can be considered a work of genius, which makes sense considering the jort-wearing grappler is a card carrying member of Mensa.
His rivalries with Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman in the land of extreme are legendary not only for their violence, but their storytelling as well. The nihilistic, Poe-quoting, Sandman-reading (the graphic novel, not the wrestler) character came out of necessity.
You see, before Levy was Raven, he was a manager in WWF known as Johnny Polo. He always had dreams of breaking out and getting recognized on a higher level, and even briefly won the WCW Light Heavyweight Championship.
However, by the time he was signed to the WWF, they had no interest in him as a wrestler. He was saddled with a terrible gimmick that saw him carrying a polo mallet to the ring and dressing like a 1990s preppy fever dream.
The wrestlers he managed didn’t elevate him to the upper echelon either, as the best he could get to join him were Adam Bomb and The Quebecers. Eventually, the itch to get between the ropes became too great and he would “nevermore” strictly be a manager.
2 SAVIO VEGA “KWANG”: Wrestlers that spit mist are dope. The Great Muta, Great Kabuki, Bushi, and Tajiri are all examples of how awesome the deadly art of the poison Asian mist is.
What isn’t dope, is when the move is given to a Puerto Rican man posing as an Asian martial artist. But that’s how WWF audiences got their first glimpse at the man who would become Savio Vega.
Given Harvey Wippleman (the poor man’s Jim Cornette) as a manager, Kwang squashed jobbers with embarrassingly terrible karate moves and a super kick that would fail to impress James Ellsworth.
The strangest thing about Kwang is that, despite his short tenure, he made it onto the roster for WWF’s Raw video game. Sure, he was a hidden character for the oddly specific Sega 32x version, and his moves were just cobbled together from other superstars, but he made it into the game nonetheless.
Legends like the Dynamite Kid, Paul Orndorff, and Bob Backlund have never been featured in WWE video games, but friggin’ Kwang, the overweight Puerto Rican ninja made the cut.
1 TONY ATLAS “SABA SIMBA”: Tony Atlas has had a tremendous career as a professional wrestler. Along with being a WWE Hall of Famer, he and Rocky Johnson were the first even African Americans to hold the WWF Tag Team Championships.
He was a respected worker in the ring, and had an incredible physique that lived up to his name. Unfortunately, Atlas had many issues with drugs that lead to his eventual release. He was given a second shot in the WWF in the early 90s. However, he was repackaged with the painfully racist gimmick of Saba Simba, a Ugandan warrior complete with headdress and spear.
Granted, according to Atlas, the paychecks he received upon his return to the company were crucial in helping the former Tag Team Champion get his life back together. At the time, he was battling his addiction, and had been homeless for a period of time. Sure, we’re thankful that Tony was able to straighten himself out, but it didn’t have to be under the extremely racist and uncomfortable guise of Saba Simba.