10 wrestlers who secretly hated their gimmicks

Cody Rhodes in his Stardust persona he used near the end of his WWE career.

#10 Stardust (Cody Rhodes)

After he was Cody Rhodes, and before he was the American Nightmare Cody, he was Stardust.

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.