The New Generation Era was a strange period for the WWE. Business was down following the fallout from Vince’s steroids trial and WWE looked to move away from bulked up behemoths to smaller Superstars like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. The era saw the rise of some truly terrible gimmicks and saw a fascination for occupation-based gimmicks from race car drivers and garbage truck drivers to tax collectors.
The weak storylines didn’t help a roster full of whack gimmicks either. The WWE during this period was mainly geared towards a younger audience while WCW, who were blowing WWE out of the water during some of these years, went towards edgier content geared towards young adults.
Vince eventually moved away from whacky gimmicks towards edgier programming which led to the birth of the Attitude Era but not before a series of terrible wrestlers and gimmicks had already been showcased during the New Generation years.
It was truly hard to narrow this list down to 5, with gimmicks as bad as TL Hopper, Isaac Yankem DDS and Tekno Team 2000 not making the cut. What’s worse than an evil wrestling dentist? Read on to find out.
5: Phantasio
Phantasio was a magician who wrestled. Think about how dumb that is for a second. Looking more like a mentally impaired mime, Phantasio’s short WWE career only lasted one televised appearance.
Phantasio made his debut in a 1995 taping of Wrestling Challenge and his only attempts at performing magic included ‘magically’ throwing streamers at his opponent and taking his opponent’s underwear off ‘magically’ after reaching into his tights which he followed with a roll up for the win. Fans were supposed to be impress by an underwear removing magician who probably couldn’t perform a basic card trick?
Phantasio followed this bewildering finish to the match by ‘magically’ taking off Earl Hebner’s underwear too.
The gimmick’s end was swift and only made one more house show appearance before being booted and thankfully so.
4: Max Moon
Although Max Moon technically debuted a few months before the New Generation Era began, he’s included in this list because most of his short WWE career was during the New Generation years.
Showing up in a WWE ring for the first time at the fag end of 1992, he was billed as being from outer space (yes, really) and came to the ring in an elaborate blue bodysuit with markings meant to look like circuit boards. Rumour has it that Konnan was originally meant to be Max Moon but he left WWE after a disagreement and Paul Diamond was chosen for the part instead. What qualified Paul Diamond to be Max Moon? He fit into the body suit.
Moon’s elaborate costume had a wrist device that shot out fireworks and a “jetpack” and overall he looked like he’d jumped out of a cartoon. His in-ring work wasn’t good to go along with the terrible gimmick and Moon had terrible matches with just about everyone he stepped in the ring with before leaving the WWE less than a year later.
His most famous moment came during the first ever episode of Monday Night Raw when he unsuccessfully challenged Shawn Michaels for the Intercontinental Championship.
3: Bastion Booger
Mike Shaw was a veteran when he first joined the WWE and had already had a series of terrible gimmicks. The first gimmick he got in WWE was that of a mad monk called Friar Ferguson which got shelved after it offended the Catholic Church of New York. However, nothing compared to the Bastion Booger gimmick that he was given by Vince and co.
Booger came to the ring in ring gear that looked like oversized diapers, pretended to be a little hunched over and ate junk food on his way to the ring. Rumour has it that the gimmick was allegedly punishment for Shaw’s burgeoning weight and the highest point of this gimmick’s career was a win over Owen Hart on an episode of All American Wrestling.
2: TL Hopper
It’s hard to believe, looking back, that TL Hopper was hyped up in a series of vignettes before his debut. Each vignette showed Hopper in a series of work-related scenarios and he may have fared marginally better if he hadn’t received any vignettes at all.
Hopper, a plumber turned wrestler, carried his trust plunger on his debut as he came to the ring in his stained workman clothes. After every victory, although there weren’t that many of them, he’d celebrate by sticking his plunger into the face of his fallen adversaries. Thankfully, he disappeared from WWE television pretty soon.
1: Mantaur
Mantaur was so outrageously stupid that I don’t even know where to begin. Mantaur was a gimmick based on the minotaur from Greek mythology. He was presented as half-human and half-bull (which he obviously wasn’t) and actually moo-ed at his opponents during matches.
Mantaur’s offensive moves included things like tackles and charges and the gimmick obviously didn’t. The fact that the man behind the gimmick, Mike Halac, was terrible in the ring only compounded matters.
WrestleCrap’s description of this gimmick sums it up the best - half-man, half-bull, all s**t.
