Bad Gimmicks in Wrestling

Professional wrestling is built around the idea of getting fans into and supporting their favourite wrestlers, and to add to that for many years wrestlers have had ‘gimmicks’ that give you a sense of who they are and what their personality is. Some wrestlers just wrestle under their name like Bill Goldberg, others have nick names which give you a sense of their perosnality like Stond Cold Steve Austin and some have full gimmicks which encompass their name, way they dress and way they behave like The Undertaker. But those were all successful.

Let’s now look at some of the worst gimmicks in wrestling history. In no particular order, let’s dive into some of the bad gimmicks in wrestling.

Giant Gonzales

At 7 feet 7 inches tall, Giant Gonzalez is the tallest wrestler to have ever lived, and is actually on the list of tallest people that ever lived. A list that Andre the Giant himself doesn’t even appear on until you’re miles down the list. So after a run as a rookie in WCW known as El Gigante what did WWF do with the man when he turned up? Dressed him in a naked gorilla costume and had him lose to The Undertaker. The costume was so bad no one could take him seriously from the second they saw him. People talk about the Batman suit with nipples…well here are giant nipples.

Seven AKA Dustin Rhodes

In the late 90s Dustin Rhodes left WWF and returned to WCW, but didn’t instantly come back as The Natural. Instead he wore all white facepaint and was called Seven and could fly. And was creepy and inspired by the movie Powder. Thankfully it lasted a week before Dustin mocked it and changed gimmick back to Dustin Rhodes

Duke the Dumpster Droese

WWF in the 80s and 90s was a place where many gimmicks were based on jobs. Sure the Undertaker worked and became the best gimmick of all time, but what about a garbage man? It didn’t work as well.

The Oddities

The Insane Clown Posse aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and it’s weird to look at this group and think they were best part of the act. They had genuine giants in the group but they never stood a chance at being anything other than a freak show. Also the guy in the gimp mask is Earthquake…whata waste.

The NWA Question Mark and Aaron Stevens

Now this gimmick was supposed to be bad…in a sense. The NWA Question Mark got over what it really shouldn’t have and that’s a tribute to the late Josephus to getting it to work. But as a gimmick it looked purposely bad and that irony didn’t stop that it was a gimmick that would only ever go so far. Add into this that Damian Sandow was paired with him as a goofy actor when he had been Mr Money in the Bank in WWE and this was a waste of talent all around.

TL Hopper

You had the good guy garbage man, so naturally WWF needed to have a bad guy plumber…at least they could have made him more like Super Mario. This gimmick was luckily only on TV a short while.

Dr Isaac Yankem AKA Kane

Before Kane was Kane he was originally Dr Isaac Yankem. A wrestling dentist with bad teeth. It’s amazing he ever got another chance (or two if you count the NEw Diesel). In recent years Dr Britt Baker has shown that the wrestling dentist can work however.

The Yeti

The Yeti was a Mummy…a giant mummy, but somehow called the Yeti…as in Bigfoot. He was taller than the Big Show and debuted at WCW Halloween Havoc where he and the Giant hugged Hulk Hogan…or maybe more than hugged him…

Oz

This was Kevin Nash in WCW. Based on the Wizard of Oz because Turner had the rights to the film. Yuck.

Repo Man

What do you do when the great tag team Demolition split up? Make one of them a sneaky Repo Man of course. This was an unfortunate gimmick of the early 90s in the WWF where every gimmick had to be a job. And this repo man was presented as some kind of burgler but came off like The Riddler.

Kerwin White AKA Chavo Guerrero Jr

Imagine havinga member of the legendary GHuerrero family and giving him a gimmick where he wants to pretend to be white so he can join a country club. That was the basic idea of Kerwin White. Unfortunately this was the gimmick that Chavo had at the time of Eddie Guerrero’s death.

The Gobbledy Gooker

Who knows what they were thinking when they decided it was a good idea to have a giant egg at the Survivor Series in 1990 and have it hatch on the show. When it did it was Hector Guererro in a turkey costume. He then danced with Mean Gene…

The AEW Librarians

When AEW was first starting we were teased that there would be a new wrestler with the gimmick and name that they are ‘The Librarian’. Then they gave us two. One male and one female. They were both jobbers and the idea of these characters never went anywhere meaningful. The only bright spark with them was that they filmed some fun X-Files style vingettes where they were conducting an investigation.

Bastion Booger

The idea is he’s fat, ugly and disgusting and smells. Apparently Vince McMahon thought this was really funny. It was not.

Festus AKA Luke Gallows

So Gallows out of the team Gallows and Anderson was previously known as Festus. He was the tag partner of Jesse and the idea was he was a complete simpleton, but when the ring bell dinged it would awaken him as a barbaric killer in the ring. Then as soon as the match was over and the bell rung again he would return to his simple state. Terrible.

Perry Saturn and Moppy

It’s hard to believe that in the year 2000 when WWF had managed to grab the group of Chris Benoit, Eddie Guererro, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko that they would drop the ball on Saturn and do him worse than he’d been done in WCW from where he’d quit. Saturn may have been rough with someone in a match and his punishment was to be in love with a mop. Heck no one thought Mr Socko would work, but it did. Moppy however didn’t.

The Shock Master

We’ve saved the best until last. The ultimate bad gimmick is The Shock Master from WCW. The debut of which is the worst debut ever. The idea was that he was meant to crash through a wall to show how big and powerful he was. This was dumb. Then there’d be a flame with the crashing through the wall. This made no sense. Then when you see him it was Tugboat under a mask. He looked big, but he was wearing a furry sleeveless jacket…and a Star Wars Storm Trooper helmet that was covered in glitter. Add on top of this that he was dubbed offscreen by Ole Anderson.

All of the above was their plan. They planned this! What they didn’t plan was that the Shock Master would trip over a board in the wall he was breaking through and fall flat on his face. And his helmet would fall off. And then you can hear the other wrestlers laugh at him with The British Bulldog laughing that he fell flat on his f**king arse.

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