The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Uses of Guitars To Get Heat

Pro wrestling has seen its share of characters linked to props, whether we’re talking about Al Snow’s head, Rick Martel’s “Arrogance” cologne, or The Mountie’s cattle prod.

And then there are guitars.

A few characters have fully integrated the guitar into their identities, while others have only used them in passing. In either case, the guitar seems uniquely equipped to garner heat, whether it’s the brash silliness of a supposed professional fighter strumming his air guitar, any number of less-than-inspired musical performances, or, of course, the explosion of a guitar shattering over a human being’s skull. This week, I’m taking a look back at the top seven uses of a guitars to get heat.

#7. Chavo Guerrero’s Mariachi Band

When Chavo Guerrero won the ECW Championship in early 2008, he wasted little time in establishing himself as a jerk heel, particularly by tapping into his heritage in as obnoxious fashion as he could, coordinating an in-ring party complete with a mariachi band. This followed in a long tradition of heel champions establishing elaborate celebrations of their own greatness.

The set up made it all the sweeter—if a tad predictable—when one of the mariachis turned out to be recently dethroned former champ CM Punk, incognito, who promptly smashed his guitar over Guerrero’s head.

#6. 3MB

There’s a special brand of lower card heel who generates heat less off of posing any sort of meaningful threat, than out of the sheer audacity to insist that he is relevant despite all signs to the contrary.

Such was the magic of Heath Slater and his One Man Band gimmick, under which he lost match after match, specializing in getting squashed by legends who returned for one-shot deals. The magic spread when Slater aligned himself with other aimless lower card heels Drew McIntyre and Jinder Mahal. Together, the three took to playing some of the stupidest looking air guitar routines known to man and, on its own terms, it got over.

3MB was particularly fortunate for its run to coincide with The Shield and the original Wyatt Family, and thus stood out all the more for being a heel trio that no one could take seriously, but that simply didn’t seem to understand that themselves, regardless of win-loss record.

#5. The Rock Sings About Cleveland

One of the early indicators that The Rock was bound for not only wrestling greatness, but a career that might transcend the business, was his uncanny ability to improvise, customize, and creatively spin convention for the situation at hand, drawing electric support from the crowd as a face, and drawing heat in the most entertaining fashion possible as a heel.

Such was the case when Rock’s conceited Hollywood character showed up in Cleveland in 2003, one foot already out of the locker room door, one foot still entrenched in the wrestling tradition of drawing heat by poking fun at the local sports team. Thus, Rock picked up his guitar backstage and performed a little lick about how “Cleveland doesn’t rock, no it totally sucks.”

Rock indirectly and inadvertently compounded the heat for this moment nine years later, returning to Cleveland as a face for his “Rock Concert” and singing that Cleveland rocks—a more crowd-friendly sentiment, sure, but also a fundamentally lamer segment than his brilliantly antagonistic little assault on the city years before.

#4. Hollywood Hogan Strumming His Championship Belt

As a newly branded heel, Hollywood Hogan drew simply magnificent heat. Some of that is the application of his charismatic gifts to get the crowd invested in his matches, regardless of a lack of acrobatics and feats of strength. All the more so, it was a salute to just how stale his red-and-yellow character had grown in WCW by the mid-1990s. The smart fans had already turned on him, and the marks were all too ready to hop on board when he actually flipped the switch and went heel.

As part of that run, Hogan found himself back in possession of the WCW World Championship. He spray painted wrestling’s most iconic gold belt with the nWo letters, and then went one step further into disrespectful, megalomaniacal douche heel mode when he started not only holding the belt over his head or over his shoulder, not just wearing it around his waist, but rather spreading it open like a guitar as he walked down the ramp and strummed along to his own theme music.

Hogan was outrageously hate-able, and thus over as a heel as this juncture. A lot of elements went into that, but strumming what was arguably wrestling’s most important title belt was an iconic detail that the Hulkster got just right at this juncture.

#3. Steve Austin Singing “Kumbaya”

Steve Austin’s post-Attitude heel run may be one of mainstream wrestling’s greatest examples of the clash between artistic success and commercial failures. Austin played a hell of a heel at this stage. Just the same, the call for him to go rogue squandered marketing and earning potential because he still had some killer momentum going as a top face, top ratings driver, and top merchandise mover.

When it came time to legitimize the heel character, though—i.e., actually make the fans boo him—there may have been no more brilliant move than a series of backstage vignettes in which Austin played guitar and sang to Vince McMahon. Austin singing “Kumbaya” and “I am the champion,” was silly to be sure, but it also got him over as self-centered, deluded, and a shell of the ass-kicking anti-hero he had so profoundly been for the preceding years. Add onto this absurdly juvenile shtick Austin’s banter opposite Kurt Angle, and you have some truly brilliant comedic heel work, and brilliant use of the guitar to garner heat.

#2. The Honky Tonk Man

I had a tough time choosing between the top two finishers in this countdown, and can understand an argument for either one in the top spot.

In the case of The Honky Tonk Man, you have a virtually credential-less icon from one of wrestling’s most successful periods of all time. Seriously. In the late 1980s, the WWF loved muscle-bound super heroes. Honky was ill-defined and on the small side. The WWF stars who didn’t look like body builders tended to be accomplished workers who had gotten over huge in their territories or other national promotions, like Harley Race, Greg Valentine, Jim Duggan, and The Junkyard Dog. The Honky Tonk Man could claim no such pedigree. And then there were those rare exceptions who earned their spots on sheer ability like Jake Roberts. You can argue HTM’s charisma and mic skills, and that he was a competent worker, but I find it a pretty tough sell to argue that he was great enough to have the longest reign ever with the Intercontinental Championship, not to mention during a period when the IC strap was still a highly valued prize.

But all of these factors are a part of Honky’s heat and why he made such a successful heel—there was so little to cheer about him. He was a goofy Elvis impersonator who was in the right place at the right time to land a top spot in the biggest wrestling company in the world.

And he had the guitar.

The guitar was absolutely integral to The Honky Tonk Man’s heel gimmick—an iconic prop, and one he used to dastardly ends. You could laugh off the gimmick and the majority of the man’s matches, but the joking was over when one of those guitars exploded over the head of a face the fans hoped might relieve him of his championship. That’s where HTM established his menace, his main entertainment value, and built his legacy as an unforgettable heel.

#1. Jeff Jarrett

Jeff Jarrett espoused the guitar largely as a way of following in The Honky Tonk Man’s footsteps as a mid-card heel with a music gimmick. Jarrett gets the nod on this countdown, though, because he ended up transcending that gimmick while maintaining his weapon of choice, the guitar an iconic part of his WWF act that he carried with him to WCW and then to TNA, such that it arguably became as integral and iconic to his character as The Undertaker’s urn or Jimmy Hart’s megaphone.

Jarrett became the first man in wrestling to use a guitar to attack a woman when he smashed his six-string over Chyna’s head in 1999. When David Arquette infamously turned heel in WCW, to hand over his dubiously won WCW Championship to Jarrett, he did so by shattering Jarrett’s guitar over Diamond Dallas Page’s head. In a signature spot in 2007, Jarrett smashed a guitar full of thumbtacks on Abyss’s head. Sting earned one of the top face moments in TNA history when he no-sold Jarrett’s guitar shot at Bound For Glory 2006 at the climax of their main event world title bout.

Jarrett used the guitar so often, so effectively, that his use of this particular weapon yielded its own gimmick name, “El Kabong.”

We can debate whether Jarrett is one of the top talents of the late 1990s and 2000s, or more of a shrewd businessman and self-serving booker. Regardless, he found himself in all manner of high profile spots for a fifteen year period, and still manages to make waves now and again in 2015. The guitar is an inextricable part of that legacy—a signature prop for one of the wrestling world’s most loathsome characters. That’s good enough for number one on this list.

Which gimmicks or moments of guitar heat would you add to this list? Let us know what you think in the comments section.