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The 411 Wrestling Top 5 10.19.11: Week 146 – Over the Top Gimmicks

October 19, 2011 | Posted by Larry Csonka

Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. What we are going to is take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to give us their Top 5 on said topic, plus up to three honorable mentions. Most of our topics will be based on recent events in the Wrestling World, looking at those events that make us think of times past.

So, on to this week’s topic…

TOP 5 OVER THE TOP GIMMICKS

SHAWN S. LEALOS
5. EXOTIC ADRIAN STREET – Every outwardly homosexual character in wrestling owes their career to Exotic Adrian Street. This man started everything. We wore makeup and brought a hot valet to ringside with him. He made uncomfortably erotic moves to other wrestlers and, in an era of Bruno Sammartino and a lot of marks in the south who believed it was real, he was the most over-the-top wrestler of any specific era. What really made him special was his wrestling. The guy was a brutal, violent brawler who liked to hurt people.

4. ANDRE THE GIANT – When you talk about over-the-top, another definition could be the wrestler overshadowing the entire sport and that is what Andre the Giant did. He was bigger than anyone at the time, in size and popularity. He was undefeated for many years and never lost to anyone. The guy was a circus freak show in professional wrestling and overshadowed everyone he fought, no matter what their gimmick was. If anyone was bigger than the sport in his era, it was Andre.

3. GEORGE “THE ANIMAL” STEELE – If you ask anyone who watched professional wrestling in the ‘80s but knows nothing about the inner workings of the industry, they might really believe George “The Animal” Steele was mentally challenged. He ran around with his tongue dangling, ate the turnbuckles and mooned for Miss Elizabeth. He was a whack job, pure and simple. He also played football for Michigan State, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He earned his masters at Central Michigan and became a high school football coach. Could you imagine the guy who ate turnbuckles, muttered unintelligible grunts and sniffed Miss Elizabeth coaching your son in high school?

2. KEVIN SULLIVAN – Kevin Sullivan has always kind of freaked me out. He started his gimmick as a devil worshiper in the ‘80s down in Florida and that is where he started building stables of freakshow wrestlers like Mark Lewin, Luna Vachon and Bob Roop. After a short break with the Varsity Club, he went back to his devil worshipping gimmick in Smokey Mountain and then in the WCW with the Dungeon of Doom. He also made a stop in ECW and began to bring his wife Nancy (the future Nancy Benoit) to the ring with him, the two continuing to practice the devil worshiping gimmick. The reason that I keep referring to the gimmick is because he was so good at it and so frightening (especially to a kid), that he made it all seem real. For a kid, it was very scary stuff.

1. THE UNDERTAKER – There is no one more over the top in the history than The Undertaker. He is the Dead Man. He has been buried alive and his spirit was lifted into the afterlife. He buried Paul Bearer in cement. He burned his own brother alive in a funeral home. His brother returned as the monster Kane. Nothing about this character even borders on realistic. Mark Callaway started his career in WCW and soon became known as Mean Mark Callous. When he left for the WWE, he was repackaged as a walking zombie called The Undertaker. Unlike other WWE cartoon characters at the time, Undertaker won over the crowd and he made his gimmick work. Even when he tried to shake it (biker Taker), the fans always wanted him back to the Dead Man. What makes The Undertaker the most over-the-top wrestler of all time is not just because of how ridiculous his gimmick was but because of how he actually made it work.

Wes Kirk
HM – Akeem: 400 lb white Chicago thug becomes a black man in a voodoo parking lot ceremony.
HM – Jake “The Drunk” Roberts: Wait, that wasn’t a gimmick???
HM – Doink The Clown: The worst part was they used very talented wrestlers to play a prankster clown that went nowhere fast.

5. Papa Shango – The WWF of the late 80’s and early 90’s had a bit of a voodoo fixation as this was the second voodoo character to appear in the company after the transformed “Akeem” of the Twin Towers. Papa Shango was an honest to goodness voodoo master who chanted and rolled his eyes in a trance while making the weirdest things happen, such as seeing black goo seep from people’s foreheads, Ultimate Warrior puking on national television, and even people laying unconscious with their boots on fire. But everybody knows voodoo ain’t easy so the man behind the gimmick went on to something a “HO” lot more fun!

4. Glacier – WCW really wanted Glacier to get over and become a huge sensation. To emphasize that they put month after month of promos for this new Glacier character who basically looked like Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat and did everything they could to garner interest, including spending over a million dollars for his elaborate entrances with fake snow, laser lights, and anything else they could put together. Unfortunately, it failed and all WCW had to show for its efforts was a new jobber to the stars.

3. Kevin Sullivan – Sullivan is probably most known for his devil worshipping gimmick that people continue to question to this day if it was real. The man had it all: Bizarre paint, sexy slave women, and an entire dungeon of monster wrestlers, snakes, and anything else you can think of. He conducted ceremonies, broke taboos, and got a lot of people paying to see him get his ass kicked. Sullivan was so convincing in his persona that people even claim he murdered Chris Benoit and framed him for it!

2. Goldust – Goldust took the idea of “bizarre” and ratcheted up so many notches that the WWF had to tone the character down considerably. This was a guy who openly kissed other men on the lips, smacked their butts, grinded against them, and threatened to stick his tongue down the throats of any fans pissing him off. Using these sexual poems and other mind games to lure in his opponent he’d usually viciously beat them to a pulp but that didn’t stop riots from breaking out and gay and lesbian groups from boycotting WWF shows over the fuss. After Marlena was added and Goldust admitted he wasn’t gay on TV the gimmick pretty much died, even though Dustin wanted to get breast implants put in to help resurrect it!

1. The Undertaker – How can the most famous gimmick of all time not be over the top? Back when Undertaker first began it wasn’t like now with the Satanic references here and there, he was simply a monstrous nearly seven foot wrestler who appeared to feel no pain, have no emotion, and was brought to the ring first by Brother Love and then by an urn wielding Paul Bearer who would use the urn in conjunction with Undertaker’s situation in the ring to “give him power” to fight back. He was considered the Grim Reaper and had the gimmick of basically being Death itself which made millions around the world follow his exploits and cheer as he took down some of the most ruthless and gigantic men in the company which morphed into complete respect and admiration for his hard work. His first gimmick prop wasn’t even a casket, it was a body bag and a small bag of ashes he’d sprinkle on anybody he defeated, and from that character arose the Phenom we love and cheer our hearts out for today.

Francisco Ramirez
5. Val Venis – The wrestling pornstar or vice-versa, Sean Morley breathed life into a gimmick that screamed Attitude Era. The vignettes before his debut were hilarious all consisting of a parody of a movie that had a porn parody, did you catch that? His finisher was called “The Money Shot”, unfortunately the name didn’t fit the move, which consisted of a simple splash of the top rope. Val Venis enjoyed some success, becoming an Intercontinental champion.

4. Friar Ferguson – Oh poor Mike Shaw, the man has been privileged to hold some of the most over the top gimmicks. The one that takes the cake for me was the short lived Friar Ferguson. Basically Shaw was a monk that had gone mad. This led to the Catholic Church having a hissyfit. Friar Ferguson was dropped, and Bastion Booger was born! That though, is a story for another day.

3. Eugene – Ok, so Eric Bischoff has a mentally handicapped nephew, who eventually is trained by William Regal and goes on to minor success in the WWE. The gimmick was as over the top as it can get, but props go out to Nick Dinsmore who played the part extremely well.

2. Phantasio – This gimmick was another short lived one, and boy was it over the top! Phantasio was a magician wrestler, yes a freaking magician! He went to the ring with no entrance music, donning a mime mask, removing it to reveal face-paint that was exactly like the mask. He had one legendary televised match in the WWE, and might I add the cherry on top was Phantasio magically removing his opponents boxers, as well as then WWE ref Earl Hebners.

1. New Jack – Now here is where it gets controversial! Is it the gimmick or the man that is over the top? It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, the correct answer is both. The New Jack gimmick is obviously of a hardcore street thug or “gangsta” wrestler, done before, but New Jack took it way over the top! Whether it be jumping off of really really high places, damn near killing Mass Transit, beating the living crap out of Gypsy Joe, stabbing a guy in the ring, admitting to trying to kill Vic Grimes in an XPW Scaffold Match, also not to mention all the crazy shit you’ll hear about in his numerous shoot interviews. Hell the guy is still being heard of due to the legal issues regarding nude photos of Terri Runnels! New Jack has taken the proverbial cake when it comes to being over the top, the gimmick itself wasn’t so, but Jerome Tony Young took New Jack to new levels, and I hate to say it, of Extreme.

R.C. Sutton
HM – Kevin Sullivan: Dude was just twisted. The guy earns double points this week for being the leader of the Dungeon of Doom
HM – Giant Gonzalez: I have no idea who designed the body suit he wore in the WWF back in the day, but that thing still gives me nightmares.

5. Bastion Booger – When I read this week’s topic, this is one of the first guys that popped in my head. The guy picked his nose on camera and had one of the most unflattering outfits I had ever seen. They synched that thing on him and it even gave him a hump. His pin attempts of dropping his crotch on some jobbers face use to make me cringe.

4. Berzerker – John Nord had a lot of wild characters he played, but I chose the Berzerker for this list. The wacky chanting of “Huss, Huss” throughout each of his matches made me wonder what was wrong with that guy. What really made him over the top were 2 things. 1. He didn’t pin a lot of people. When he was done beating on someone he just threw them out of the ring and let them get counted out. 2. He tried to stab the Undertaker with his sword. That was pretty cutting edge stuff for back in that time.

3. Irwin R. Schyster – Mike Rotunda was a good ring technician during his initial run with WCW and when he came to the WWF he was saddled with one hell of a gimmick. A former I.R.S. agent. He would come out and cut promos about how people need to pay their taxes. The guy wrestled for years with suspenders and a tie on! I think Rotunda’s sheer in ring ability kept him employed and working about 3 years longer than that gimmick should have lasted.

2. Boogeyman – Most of the over the top gimmicks I thought of were all related to a time when everyone was given a gimmick. Before every WWE superstar was given a generic name, there was time when they all had characters. What makes the Boogeyman so over the top was we were past the character days, yet there he was. He was always all done up in his face paint and his clocks, and spitting worms out of his mouth into people’s faces. The Boogeyman is coming to get ya!

1. Undertaker – I can’t think of anyone more over the top than the Undertaker. From the mystical powers of the urn, to body bags, to caskets, to crucifying people, being buried alive, rising above arenas, setting people on fire, lightning strikes, and on and on and on. As the character days of the WWF turned into the attitude era and now the generic name days of the WWE, one character outlasted them all, the Undertaker. No matter how outlandish the stunt or over the top the story line goes, when you hear the Gong, the arena erupts.

Ryan Byers
HM – Los Teletubbies: Yes, you read that right. LOS TELETUBBIES. Four middle-aged luchadores dressing up like characters from a TV show geared towards infants. How was that supposed to draw?

HM – The Johnsons: These guys generated a lot of talk when they first showed up, but it’s been about ten years since TNA debuted now, so I figured that there were some younger fans that needed to be educated about the ridiculousness of the Johnsons, two men who wrestled as personified penises.

HM – The Flying Nuns: Before the Headbangers were in the WWF as the Headbangers, they were the “Sisters of Love,” two burly men who were dressed in habits and passed off as women. Oh, and one of them was named “Mother Smucker.”

5. Konaka = Pale One – If you want weird professional wrestlers, there’s typically no better place to look than the Japanese independents. One of the best examples of this is a wrestler called Konaka = Pale One, who is most frequently associated with the small promotion 666. In addition to the oddity of having an equals sign in his name, Konaka’s got a bizarre look where he paints the majority of his torso white with a couple of red and blue accents. However, the most unique thing about this guy and the main reason that he’s here is the fact that he often wrestles while in yoga poses. Seriously. Due to his flexibility, he busts out the majority of his big moves with his legs contorted into the shape of a pretzel. I’ve even come equipped with video evidence on this one.

4. Menso-re Oyaji – When I first saw this guy wrestle in the tiny indy company of Okinawa Pro Wrestling, I wasn’t sure exactly what he was. It turns out that his gimmick is essentially the living embodiment of every stereotype that people from other parts of Japan have about Okinawans. So, when he comes out to the ring constantly sipping from a can of Orion beer that rarely sits down, when he puts on his mask that has a bowl of ramen noodles sitting on top of it and a curly mustache painted on the face, and when he dawns his obnoxious Hawaiian-style shirt, he’s not doing that because he likes it. He’s doing that to become the living embodiment of ever joke and knock possible on his people . . . and the Okinawans who come to the shows actually LOVE IT. That’d be like having your top babyface in the South extolling the virtues of inbreeding while the fans cheered him on. It’s just weird.

3. Bono-Chan – If I really wanted to, I could probably fill this list with gimmicks from the now-defunct HUSTLE, but let’s just focus on one. Most of you are familiar with the Great Muta, who has been a legend for years and showed up in HUSTLE when it was at the height of its popularity. When he did so, he was involved in an angle with female HUSTLE personality Yingling. This culminated in Muta brewing up some of his trademark green mist and blowing it into Yingling’s crotch. In the HUSTLE universe, this somehow caused her to become pregnant, and the pregnancy for some reason culminated in her laying an egg. No, I’m not making any of this up. She carried the egg with her throughout several shows, until eventually it hatched, producing what appeared to be former sumo wrestler Akebono. This wasn’t Akebono, though. This guy sucked on a pacifier and in many other ways acted like an overgrown infant. Dubbed Bono-Chan (“chan” being a suffix used in Japanese when small children are being described), the big guy served as Yingling’s bodyguard for a while until they had a falling out and he crushed her. Eventually, Bono-Chan was allowed to graduate to being Bono-Kun (“kun” being a suffix for older children) at which point he got to act like a schoolboy.

2. YOSHIHIKO / Mr. #6 – A lot of people have brought up YOSHIHIKO on this website, so some of you probably already have some familiarity with the gimmick. For those of you who don’t know, YOSHI is a blow up doll portrayed as a professional wrestler in the Japanese company DDT. The promotion’s wrestlers actually do a great job of having “matches” against him, consisting of wrestle moves where the guy who is being “hurt” in kayfabe terms is actually the one doing the most work to pull the move off. (A huricanrana is the prime example of this.) However, YOSHIHIKO isn’t the only gimmick of this sort running around anymore. He’s been joined by Mr. #6, an eight year old boy in a lucha libre mask. Though 6’s opponents have a bit of an advantage over YOSHIHIKO’s in that he is alive and has the ability to move under his own power a bit, the disadvantage is that you can’t bump a child around the ring like you can an inflatable doll. The principle in matches against him is the same, though. Basically, you do wrestling moves around him. Both of these characters produce some usually entertaining results.

1. Danshoku Dino – And here is the king of the over-the-top gimmicks. I used to refer to Dino as a “gay character,” but then I realized that wasn’t exactly fair to gay people, as Dino doesn’t act like a normal gay person. Essentially, his goal in life is to molest every single man that he happens across. Originally the gimmick made me a bit uncomfortable because I thought that it reinforced negative stereotypes of gays as being oversexed, but, upon doing some research, I learned that in Japanese subculture there is often celebration of that which is considered “different” and that Dino’s character is considered to be one such celebration. That made the guy’s matches a lot more entertaining, as I was now able to cheer on his bevvy of wrestling moves which involve kissing men, grabbing at their crotches, and, most importantly, putting their heads in his shorts. This ain’t PG.