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Since the beginning stage of professional wrestling, wrestlers have standardized their movements, behaviours and appearances by performing their own gimmicks. All of the gimmicks are classified as either babyfaces or heels or, in some rare cases, anti-heroes.
Gimmicks have to be over-the-top and therefore extremely easy for anyone to understand. These gimmicks explicitly exploit social, racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes to please or provoke certain group of crowds.
This involves the wrestler to have a certain appearance that sets him apart from the rest, a theme song which gets the desired reaction from the crowd which is synonymous with the wrestler just like his ring name. Either wrestlers get to use their real names or else the WWE gives them a unique name.
Over the years, there have been many gimmicks that just did not click with the audience. But there were some wrestlers who reinvented themselves and grabbed and ran away with the success that came with it.
Here are the top 5 repackaged gimmicks today:
Right now Dolph Ziggler is back to being underutilized but his gimmick and presence as the Show-off has many takers. He has built quite a fan following though the WWE seems adamant in not letting this guy take the baton and run with it. He was a cheerleader and then later a caddie. But all of this led to what he has become now.
Much like Dolph Ziggler, he has been going nowhere lately. And just like Ziggler, this isn’t the first gimmick he’s portrayed. He was a sidekick to Michelle McCool, but that gimmick never really kicked off. But he came back as the Intellectual Savior of the Masses which by far, in my humble opinion, is the best fictional character that WWE has had in a while. He never ceases to be amazing on the mic.
Bray Wyatt
The leader of the most bizarre family has given many a mesmerizing promos. Another great fictional character, it is quite a sight watching him, and his followers be unusual. He started off as Husky Harris, a part of the overtly misused NXT storyline two years ago. He is one of the new brigade of superstars from NXT who’re just too exciting on the mic. Put Wyatt, Ambrose and Sandow in a promo and that’s must-see television.
Okay, so nobody really remembers the geek of a character that Dr. Isaac Yankem was prior to being the Big Red Monster. So successful was this Kane gimmick, that people have most probably forgotten that this gimmick existed.
Rocky Maivia had quite a debut being the lone survivor at Survivor Series but that gimmick could only get closer to the Intercontinental Title. I am glad he was booed out of the arena as Rocky Maivia because this led to him reinventing himself as The Rock. A bully who addressed himself in third person and hence the most awesome era of the WWE had another awesome character.
