Bad Gimmicks Made Good/That You Enjoyed

[Liam O'Rourke]

For this week's podcast, we're looking at examples in wrestling history of bad gimmicks made good, and are keen to get some feedback on cases that you always thought stood out to you in that vain. Couple of ways to look at this one, so feel free to give an example of either

1 - A bad gimmick that either the promotion or the wrestler worked hard at and made it work, and what you feel was the reason it did.

Or

2 - A bad gimmick that, for whatever reason, worked for you and you personally enjoyed despite the common opinion that it sucked, and why you got into it.

Of course the key question is why - the more detail the better. As always the best posts will be read on the show and you'll be credited accordingly, but looking forward to seeing which ones stand out to you guys.

 

EDIT - The podcast discussing Bad Gimmicks Made Good, or just bad gimmicks you flat out enjoyed, is now up at the following link: http://squaredcirclegazette.podbean.com/mf/web/w32phd/SCGRadio38-BadGimmicksMadeGood.mp3

[tiger_rick]

Umaga was a ludicrous gimmick to attempt in 2006. A Samoan jungle savage. Seriously? It was so backwards it was beyond belief. There's no way it should have been successful but it was. The company deserve credit for coming up with a backstory and a "handler" that while not credible, where understandable and they stuck with their plan and slowly got him over with squash matches. They didn't give up, didn't make him a comedy character or whatever. The biggest reason it got over though is that his work was great. Hard to believe he was the clumsy fucker from 3 minute warning. He was quick, his stuff was crisp and his mannerisms brilliant. Even the Samoan spike should have been a naff finisher but he got it over big time.

[HarmonicGenerator]

The Undertaker, on first glance, is a mad gimmick. Magic zombie demon cowboy funeral director. And yet, it's probably the most successful gimmick there's ever been. Goes to show you never know what will stick!

[Egg Shen]

Probably some of the newer comedic guys, Santino/Mizdow (any Sandow gimmick) spring to mind. In the wrong hands they could have been horrific, but the two guys in questions pulled them off.

[Keith Houchen]

Akeem. Fucking ludicrous really but I loved him and Bossman together. His funky strut was perfect viewing when Slick was wearing his red suit.

[air_raid]

The Undertaker, on first glance, is a mad gimmick. Magic zombie demon cowboy funeral director. And yet, it's probably the most successful gimmick there's ever been. Goes to show you never know what will stick!

 

God damn it, I was going to start my Undertaker post with "I'm going to be controversial here" since The Undertaker is widely lauded as the best gimmick ever, but here you are, getting in first. Going straight to the top of my list for the next Twatlist.

 

At face value, "The Undertaker" as it was in its infancy was pretty daft. Most occupational gimmicks were fairly straightforward - IRS, Duke the Dumpster and Doink were, in turns, an accountant, a bin man and a clown that happened to moonlight as wrestlers. Fine. However "The Undertaker" wasn't just an undertaker, he was actually dead. Based on appearances, he's a reanimated corpse. It doesn't really make sense, like when Kevin Nash was "Oz" which was the place, not the person, and billed as being from The Emerald City, the capital of himself. But whatever.

 

The success behind the Undertaker's longevity stemmed from the character's popularity, which I think came from the fact that when you strip away the cartoon character element, you've actually got an unstoppable badass. The Undertaker was essentially another guy brought in to crush a bunch of guys to get built up for Hogan, then lose to Hogan, like all the others. Most guys brought in were big and fat, or muscular, or scary, but then once they'd lost to Hogan, they didn't really have anywhere to go. The Undertaker appealed (for some reason) almost immediately. As soon as WrestleMania VII you can hear some fans cheering when "the Dead Man" hammers Jimmy Snuka like the Jobber To The Stars that he was, and a summertime alliance with the positively demonic Jake the Snake still didn't deter an increasing number of fans from cheering for him. Watch Survivors 91 again - the "death of Hulkamania" isn't as universally mourned as the WWF would have liked. What really helped him in the end was when the time came for him to look at the lights for "The Hulkster" is that it wasn't clear cut, he wasn't pinned for three because he'd been legdropped to bits, his unstoppable aura remained intact and Hogan had looked lucky to beat him. HULK FUCKING HOGAN.

 

In hindsight, the Undertaker became the easiest guy to turn babyface you could imagine. Everybody likes their favourite guy to win as often as possible and the Undertaker was the most reliable hero a kid in the 90s could have. Plus, you could stock a Toys R Us with bits of tat related to the character. Shirts, Hasbros, teddy bears, foam tombstones, foam urns... I myself very nearly painted Ecto-1 black so I could recreate his SummerSlam 92 entrance in my Hasbro fed, but mama raid wouldn't let me.

 

I'm not going to give the booking all the credit for the gimmick being such a roaring success. If the man behind the gimmick hadn't put his all into it, it would have been terrible. But the man lumbered with the idea of "well you're an undertaker but instead of looking after corpses, you'll, like, sort of, be dead yourself" threw himself whole-heartedly into it and decided he was going to be the best undead unstoppable ass-kicker he could be. He succeeded in making the most unbelievable character they'd ever featured... well, believable.

 

Carl actually has an excuse to mention Mark Calaway by name here, if Undertaker comes up in the podcast!

[Liam O'Rourke]

And that may be the first thing to bring a smile to his face for years :-)

 

Love the analysis though - I find the first year of Undertaker really interesting because he got over so much so fast to the point that him beating Hulk Hogan was by no means a stretch. Taker may lead off the podcast because he's Exhibit 1-A. Has to be.

 

Love Akeem as a suggestion, would people go so far as to say Boss Man fits into this?

[The Invisible Boy]

I think the next obvious one after Undertaker must be Kane, the whole story of those two is such a big gimmick, I wouldn't necessarily say it was bad, more far fetched. Saying that however The evolution of Kane has been a rocky one. The debut of him as Undertaker's half brother and the whole backstory of the death of their parents and so on was amazing. His first appearance ripping the door off the cell was incredible and for someone to look even more like a monster than Undertaker was unbelievable!

 

As time went on to more recent years though many feel they ruined Kane, having him show up at Christmas parties with ribbons stuck to his mask, it made him look ridiculous. Then he lost the mask and in a lot of ways this was a rebirth of Kane as a character. Other than, in my opinion, the awesome feud with Shane McMahon when they pretty much tortured each other every week which led to their ambulance match. The loss of the mask destroyed the back story of him being all disfigured and burned though and the way they tried to explain it was that he wasn't physically disfigured or tortured but mentally. Plus the loss of the mask destroyed the mystery of Kane and the fands questions of 'what monster lurks under the mask?'

 

Now it's hard to think of today's corporate stooge Kane as the monster he used to be. I wouldn't even be surprised if some newer recent fans thought this Kane was a totally different character to the monster who debuted in 1998. They never mention him as the brother of the Undertaker anymore either, unless I miss when they do.

 

Just to add Al Snow's head gimmick was great, a guy who is unhinged who thinks a mannequin's head is speaking to him. I think it worked so well and it also allowed fans to interact in his entrance and during matches, waving the styrofoam heads in the crowd, which looked awesome and the innuendo filled chants of "what does everybody want?" It just made him hand picked for the awesome hardcore division of the time.

[Chest Rockwell]

Snitsky is a decent more recent example. He was just so shit and goofy that people latched on to him in an ironic way at first, and then he actually really got over. Way more than he had any right to anyway, even if he was never a big star.

 

And all it really took was aborting a baby and saying it wasn't his fault. Best catchphrase going for a while. Also the sleeveless tux was a thing of beauty.

[air_raid]

I think the next obvious one after Undertaker must be Kane, the whole story of those two is such a big gimmick, I wouldn't necessarily say it was bad, more far fetched.

 

I think the idea and original concept for Kane is fine in the context of The Undertaker, if we've accepted and believe in the existence of his character. "What if X had an evil brother" is a tried and tested plot device in supernatural/fantasy fiction, which the story of "The Undertaker" is closer to than your traditional pro wrestling character arc. What the character did have, on face value, was a short shelf life. Much like in the olden days the story was "what do you do with this guy once Hogan beats him" I bet most of us didn't expect Kane to last much longer than WrestleMania XIV, but much like Undertaker himself, Kane was so well protected that he got over by being a believable scary monster that it took a lot to beat. It still came across as massive when The Rock managed to pin him - only with help from a sledgehammer wielding Mankind - on a Raw in September '98.

 

The trick to Kane, I think, was that there were enough ways to keep him evolving to provide new entertainment, and it's only when he's relapsed into "same old shit" that he becomes stale. Moving from the original heel horror story to corporate outcast sympathy figure/X-Pac's mate kept him interesting. Him and American Bad Ass Undertaker reuniting as babyfaces to smash heels was a twist on their previous alliance. Unmasked bald psychopath heel at least had different babyfaces to work with than before and for a while was interesting but then he stood still for ages, and despite a few turns the character didn't move on much until he put the mask back on and for a while the reimagined "demon" had legs again, and took another delightfully unexpected turn with the comedic run with Daniel Bryan... before he turned Corporate, dropped the mask and went back to the same lumbering heel routine that we had previously gotten bored of.  Give him credit, there's probably been more good than bad over the years, but I do wonder if there's anything left for him since he's done heel and face, cartoon monster, sympathetic outcast, asskicker, jilted lover, certifiable nutcase, comic relief, and just-a-bloke-in-a-shirt.

 

Love Akeem as a suggestion, would people go so far as to say Boss Man fits into this?

 

I think "rogue copper" was a great gimmick. If anything they should have done more with it. Other than antagonising Dusty Rhodes for stealing from him, they could have explored other avenues of him trying to bring babyfaces to justice for perceived crimes against other heels that would actually have been bollocks. Anyone that gave The Brain or Jimmy Hart abuse should have been sentenced to a drubbing for assault, for instance, and they could have actually done a feud with Jake over Roberts stealing the Million Dollar Belt, rather than using it as the vehicle to turn Boss Man face and segue from DiBiase/Roberts to DiBiase/Boss Man.

 

Actually, fuck that. Big Babyface Boss Man was awesome, they shouldn't have held off on that for anything.

 

He deserves another run, in fact.

[IronSheik]

Rocky Miavia's evolution into the Rock is interesting. The smiling babyface obviously went down like a lead balloon with the audience, and set the table for the charismatic trash talking heel / babyface he would become.

 

Kurt Angle said that Vince based Kurt's initial character on Rocky Miavia, same smiling goofball formula only this time expecting him to be a heel with the crowd. It worked.

[Undefeated Steak]

Ric Flair's Nature Boy gimmick. Gay, flamboyant, shouty, robe wearing nutjob.

 

JBL reinvented as a main eventer. Whether or not you thought his title run was a success, I enjoyed his new character. I was thinking about this the other day actually, who was the last wrestler other than JBL to have a long title reign and win almost every defense with proper old school shenanigans? Even baddy Edge won a lot of his matches clean.

 

The Boogeyman. It was never going to be more than it was but a worm eating monster popping up behind sofas and scaring the life outta Teddy Long and Booker T was a highlight of many a Smackdown.

 

Umaga was a really good shout further up the thread. On a lesser scale, Rusev has worked wonders with his straight-outta-the-70's Eastern European gimmick.

 

Fans of the original ECW, were the bWo as good as Joey Styles and the ECW documentary made out?

[PSF]

Fans of the original ECW, were the bWo as good as Joey Styles and the ECW documentary made out?

 

Simple answer...............No. Nothing in ECW was even close to be as good as they always try to make out

[dopper]

The bWo thing only lasted less than 6 months. Big Stevie Cool being super-over in the Barely Legal semi-main event was the only bright spot in terms of matches, and there were no legendary angles or promos to speak of.

 

I think the main reason some people remember their stuff so fondly is because the three of them did such a great job copying the mannerisms of Nash, Hall, & Hogan. Da Blue Guy was particularly spot-on.

 

It probably wouldn't even crack the Top 10 on a list of my favourite gimmicks created in ECW.

[air_raid]

Kurt Angle said that Vince based Kurt's initial character on Rocky Miavia, same smiling goofball formula only this time expecting him to be a heel with the crowd. It worked.

 

Based on the vignettes I literally thought he was meant to be coming in as a baby, should have known otherwise from smarmy phrases like "showcase my talents." I thought "this isn't going to work" but when he was wrestling Shawn Stasiak at Survivors, as soon as he got on the mic and said "You do not boo an Olympic gold medallist" I sat up and thought "Genius."

 

Appropos of nothing, has there ever been a more obvious example of a JTTS being thrown onto a PPV for no reason other than to lose, than ole Meat going out to do the honours for Kurt here?