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Pro wrestling has always been filled with larger than life characters. This has been true ever since Gorgeous George revolutionized sports entertainment by portraying an effeminate heel who rankled the conservative audiences of his era.
Ever since then, there has been a plethora of bizarre, outlandish, or even just plain silly gimmicks come down the pike. Everything from space invaders, time travelling tag teams, and undead warriors have all spent time on a wrestling fan's screen.
But while there are many colorful characters in wrestling--some more successful than others -- there will inevitably be those performers who don't like their gimmick. Perhaps the gimmick or character isn't successful, or it demeans the wrestler portraying it. For whatever the reason, there are a lot of wrestlers who didn't like their ring names, costumes, or their entire persona.
Here are ten wrestlers who secretly hated their gimmick or character.
#1 The Gobbledy Gooker (Hector Guerrero)
Hector Guerrero was a very talented wrestler working out of El Paso, Texas. The older brother of Eddie Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero, Sr. (not to be confused with his, perhaps more famous, son Chavo Guerrero Jr.) Hector's only real flaw was the fact he was surrounded by so many talented people in his immediate family. Hector lacked Eddie's raw athletic ability and charisma, or Mando Guerrero's high flying skills.
Still, he was a major star in the 1980s, especially in the southern NWA territories. He captured over thirty title reigns during his tenure, most of them tag team championships with his family or Manny Fernandez. It must have seemed a great stroke of luck when he was offered a WWE contract in 1990.
Unfortunately, he was saddled with the Gobbledy Gooker character. Basically, he was a giant, mute turkey who liked to dance and hatched out of a gigantic egg. Bizarrely, the WWE pushed his debut heavily, lugging around the giant egg to television tapings for months before Survivor Series. And when the Gooker hatched, he engaged in a painfully long segment where he danced with Mean Gene Okerlund while the crowd largely sat silently, unsure if the whole thing was some sort of joke.
To his credit, Hector tried his damnedest to make the gimmick work. Unfortunately, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
How badly received was the Gobbledy Gooker? Well, PWI gives out the "Gooker" award to bad gimmicks in wrestling. To quote Stan Lee, 'nuff said.
#2 Lord Humongous (Sid Vicious.)
During the 1980s, the Road Warrior franchise was one of the biggest things to hit the cinema since Star Wars and Jaws. The aesthetic of the movie translated into fashion, advertising, music videos, and...the world of sports entertainment.
The most visual and prevalent of the Road Warriors rip-offs were...the Road Warriors Hawk and Animal. Not to be outdone, a slew of other pretender gimmicks popped up. One of these was the Lord Humongous gimmick, based upon the character of the same name from the Mel Gibson Road Warrior film.
Lord Humongous was portrayed by three different men, but the most famous of the trio was unquestionably Sid Vicious. Jerry Lawler needed a villain to oppose his heroic character, and Humongous certainly fit the bill.
The gimmick was successful enough, mostly because it was the 1980s and the era of extreme, cartoonish characters. However, Sid Vicious hated the fact that he had to cover his face--the face being one of the way a wrestler markets himself -- and embarrassing S/M inspired outfit. He also had some trouble breathing and seeing out of the mask. Still, he endured the gimmick until he was able to gain employment with NWA/WCW.
Once he went by his real first name (his real last name is Eudy) he found great success, and never looked back at the humongous character.
#3 Saba Simba (Tony Atlas)
Tony Atlas was one of the biggest African American stars of the 1970s and 1980s. He was often in a tag team with Rocky Johnson--Dwayne The Rock Johnson's father -- but also found a lot of singles success. During his career, he racked up an impressive thirty-five championship reigns, including the coveted NWA North American title, which has recently been brought back for use in NXT.
Atlas was hired by the WWE in the early 1980s, and given his massive build and crowd favorite status, he seemed on the verge of the greatest success of his career. Indeed, he was being groomed to become the next Intercontinental champion.
However, a substance abuse problem led to him being unreliable, no showing a lot of dates. WWE would release him from his contract briefly.
Atlas managed to kick his drug habit, but the struggle took its toll on his body, and he had lost much of his impressive musculature by the time he made it back to WWE. Since the company thought he no longer looked like Tony Atlas, they gave him a new gimmick - Saba Simba, the African tribesman.
Atlas hated the gimmick for several reasons. For one, he thought it was a stereotype. For another, he knew little of African dances and rituals and poorly portrayed the character as a result.
Fans were confused, since most of them easily recognized Atlas even with a diminished physique. Eventually, Atlas was let go and returned to using his real name in other promotions.
#4 The Booty Man (Ed Leslie, Zodiac, Brutus the Barber Beefcake, the Disciple)
Brutus Beefcake is perhaps one of the most visible 1980s WWE wrestlers to have never really made it past being a mid-card gatekeeper.
He owes his entire career to his friendship and association with Hulk Hogan. Ed Leslie portrayed Hogan's younger, dumber, weaker cousin, Dizzy Hogan, for a time. While they were technically a tag team it was Dizzy's Hogan's main job to get into trouble so the Hulkster could rescue him.
Then he signed with the WWE -- again at Hogan's insistence -- and actually was part of a pretty decent tag team with Greg the Hammer Valentine, the Dream Team. Unfortunately, when he split off on his own he ended up with one of the worst gimmicks in WWE history; The Barber.
His antics of putting foes to sleep and then badly cutting their hair were far more heelish, but he was a babyface who got a decent reaction from the crowd. Oddly, Leslie loved the Barber gimmick so much he tried to take it with him when he left WWE. The promotion refused to allow him to use the character, even after Leslie tried to buy it off of them.
Unable to use his most famous gimmick, Leslie became the Booty Man. Mainly he would dance like an idiot, though he did have the lovely Kimberly Page (DDP's wife) as his valet, the Booty Babe.
His running knee lift finisher fell about as flat as the whole character. Leslie hated the gimmick, but used it for over a year before turning heel and Joining the Dungeon of Doom.
#5 "Lady's Man" Dean Malenko
Let it be said, without irony or controversy, that Dean Malenko was the most technically gifted wrestler of all time.
The man of a thousand holds was just that. If there is a wrestling move in existence, Dean knows it, and seven different ways to counter it. From mat wrestling, to submissions, to high flying moves and top rope superplexes, Dean Malenko had one of the best movesets of all time in pro wrestling.
He garnered title reigns in WCW, especially the cruiserweight division, which Dean also booked and filled with some of the best talent in the world. He also enjoyed reigns as the United States and tag team champion.
When he joined the WWE, walking out on his contract with WCW despite its lucrative nature, Vince McMahon believed he needed 'spicing up.' He was saddled with a 'lady's man' gimmick that mostly saw him behave in a harassing, creepy way toward Lita.
Malenko wound up retiring rather than using the gimmick, and now works as a road agent. An ignoble end to a great career.
#6 OZ (Kevin Nash)
When Ted Turner purchased Jim Crockett promotions, he made a ton of questionable decisions. For one, he forbade wrestlers from coming off the top rope. For another, he removed the protective padding at ringside, making wrestlers take hard bumps on the concrete arena floor.
He also came up with -- quite proudly as it turns out -- one of the most head-scratchingly awful gimmicks in pro wrestling history; Oz. Turner didn't come up with the idea because he did intense market research or running focus groups. Instead, it all came down to greed.
Turner had purchased the rights to the Wizard of Oz, a fantasy film based on the work of Frank Baum. Turner wished to cash in on both video sales and showings of the film on his Turner network. In order to cross-promote it, he thought a gimmick based on the wizard from the film would help get better ratings for both his wrestling program and the movie.
He was wrong. So very wrong. The gimmick pretty much stalled out Kevin Nash's career in WCW. Even when he quit using the hated character, he couldn't get over. It would take becoming Big Daddy Cool Diesel to actually make him a star, and make most people forget about his humble beginnings.
#7 The Shockmaster (Fred Ottman, aka Tugboat and Typhoon)
Fred Ottman was a big, big man. Easily as powerful as Hulk Hogan in his heyday, the massive man gained a WWE contract. Ottman was famous for never turning down a gimmick or character. Perhaps that's why he didn't object when WWE put him in a striped shirt and named him tugboat.
The Tugboat character didn't go very far. The highlight was probably tagging with Hulk Hogan himself in a one-off match. After that, he changed gimmicks to become the initially villainous Typhoon alongside fellow big man Earthquake (John Tenta.) The heel team eventually turned face, and were one of the more surprisingly popular tag teams of the new generation era.
Money talks, and Ottman eagerly signed the dotted line for more money at WCW. Unfortunately, he was given a glitter sprayed Stormtrooper helmet and named Shockmaster. The outfit looked terrible, but it was his entrance that spoiled the character having any momentum. Ottman busted through a wall on cue, but tripped over lighting equipment and fell to the floor.
The mask flew off, revealing Ottman's true face, even as a pre-recorded diatribe from the Shockmaster played over the PA. In one fell swoop, Shockmaster went from potential main eventer to a comedy act.
#8 The American Bad Ass (Undertaker, Mark Calloway)
As the Attitude Era drew to a close, it was replaced by the Ruthless Aggression era. A new infux of talent from ECW and WCW pushed the physical limits of wrestling matches, and changed the business from something hokey into a more 'serious' portrayal of professional fighters.
Since The Undertaker's undead character seemed a poor fit for these new times, he was rebranded as the American Bad Ass, though he still used the Undertaker name. Basically he was a biker, with definite parallels to Stone Cold Steve Austin sans the beer drinking and middle fingers.
Undertaker actually was quite uncomfortable with the gimmick at first. He had trouble speaking as the ABA character after so many years of long pauses and cryptic speeches as the lord of darkness. Without his pyros, smoke, and magic effects, Undertaker felt like he was diminished as a performer. He also didn't care for either Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit, two flash in the pan rap-metal acts that performed his theme songs.
Ironically, it was the ABA character that led to Undertaker becoming a better wrestler. Since he was self-conscious, he worked hard to improve his in-ring game and added many MMA and submission moves to his repertoire. Taker would return to his classic gimmick, and hasn't looked back at the ABA since.
#9 The Stalker (Barry Windham)
Barry Windham was one of the most celebrated wrestlers to come out of the NWA territories. Trained and hand-picked as a successor by Dusty Rhodes, the lanky and likeable blonde second generation wrestler did great things in the southern promotions.
After teaming with Dusty for a time, he betrayed his mentor and tag partner, Lex Luger, to join the Four Horsemen. With the superplex and the iron claw, he would gain the United States championship and hang onto it with a death grip.
But when he joined the WWE, the promotion had no interest in building on his past career. They decided to try and pretend that he was a totally new character named The Stalker. His no-nonsense, largely silent hunter-killer type didn't go over very well with fans, who were confused by his pseudo-military gear.
Windham hated the gimmick, but as a company man, he did what he was told. He would return to WCW and become world champion under his real name, Barry Windham.
#10 Stardust (Cody Rhodes)
Second generation star Cody Rhodes made quite a splash when he debuted for WWE. After a short run as a do-gooding babyface, he joined Randy Orton's Legacy stable, usually teaming with fellow second-generation star Ted Dibiasie, Jr.
Cody was easily far more talented in the ring than his famous father. However, he struggled to find a character he could portray. When Legacy fizzled out, he became "Dashing" Cody Rhodes on the basis of the fact the WWE Divas voted him the 'most handsome' of all the WWE wrestlers.
The gimmick wasn't great, but then he was injured by Rey Misterio's leg brace and badly broke his nose. He wound up wearing a protective mask and moping about like a third-rate phantom of the opera.
He returned to just being Cody Rhodes, and turned babyface to team with real-life brother Dustin Runnels, AKA Goldust. WWE decided that the tag team would do better if Cody matched Dustin, so they changed him to the Stardust character.
Cody hated the gimmick mostly because of the ill-fitting and hot costume. To his credit, he played the character to the hilt and even had a great feud with actor Stephen Amell. However, there's no question that he's a much bigger star outside of WWE playing himself than the Stardust character.
