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The 411 Wrestling Top 5: The Top 5 Worst Gimmick Changes
The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. We take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to participate and give us their Top 5 on said topic. So, onto this week’s topic…
Week 334 – The Top 5 Worst Gimmick Changes
Wrestling is always filled with changes, but who had the worst gimmick changes?
JUSTIN WATRY
5. Stardust – You want to know why Stardust made the top five but Seven didn’t? Because at least everybody had the sense and right mind to ditch Seven in a hurry. Stardust is still going over a year later with no end in sight. Cody Rhodes may claim “Cody Rhodes” is never returning, but I call BS on that one. At age 30 and a whole prime ahead of him, there is still plenty of time to escape being a lower card comedy act who loses 90% of the time. Cody is a great talent who puts all of his heart and soul into each gimmick, but from day one, I knew this Stardust nonsense would be a bust. Feud with Stephen Amell, do all the comic book stuff, and then move on…
4. Mike Awesome in WCW – Confession: I was a fan of Mike Awesome in ECW. I forget the exact episode, but I remember one episode (or pay-per-view) where there was just pure chaos going on everywhere. Joey Styles was screaming. Mike Awesome was going wild; I think Rhyno may have just gored half the roster through tables or something. Anyways, there was Awesome, and it was such a cool moment. My memory may be a bit funky, but none of that mattered once he jump shipped to WCW. The paychecks were surely great, but his career effectively ended when he was the “Fat Chick Thrilla” or “That 70’s Guy” with lava lamps. Just ridiculous. Considering the star power in WCW was fading, you’d think they would have taken advantage of the signing. Nope! Thankfully, he eventually redeemed himself in 2005 at ECW One Night Stand. His last ‘awesome’ moment in the industry.
3. Mr. America – I maintain to this day that Mr. America could have worked. Heck, it SHOULD have worked. My brother still brings this story line up on occasion and just laughs. Well, with the United States in turmoil at the time and the Hulk Hogan/Vince McMahon needing a little spark, this was a classic old school tactic. Sadly, the entire did turn into a joke after a week or two. Contract issues popped up, Smackdown was losing focus, and depending on which side you believe, creative differences led to the whole thing being flushed down the toilet. So much that Hogan was out of the company for nearly two years and even missed the historic WrestleMania XX event in 2004…in Madison Square Garden! Wow.
2. Kerwin White – No explanation needed.
1. Stone Cold Steve Austin as a heel in 2001 – Don’t blame the Invasion story line folks. Don’t blame the ill timed Triple H injury. Don’t blame the Brothers of Destruction main event run. Don’t blame the company going corporate. You can’t even blame the departure of The Rock. Sorry ladies and gentlemen, business took a tumble the second Stone Cold decided he was bored and may lose his ‘spot’ to The Rock and felt a heel turn would re-invigorate his career. The sad reality is he (and WWE) had THREE chances to stop it before any damage was done. First was before WrestleMania 17 when the idea was brought up. Flat out say no and carry on. The second chance was at WM in Texas when Steve Austin even said he should have called an audible and scrapped the entire plan on the spot, and if that isn’t bad enough, WWE tried the whole thing AGAIN months later at the July PPV. Just as he was molten hot with audiences again drawing the biggest non-WM PPV buy rate of all-time, he went back to being a heel. So disappointing. By the time things were back to normal at the end of the year, it was over. Stone Cold would no show events twice in the coming months, bashing creative publicly along the way, before finally walking out of the company in June 2002…
Chad Perry
5. A-Train to Lord Tensai – I mean in reality A-Train was not a great gimmick either (but for that matter neither was Prince Albert or Albert). The only gimmick that ever really got over for Matt Bloom was Giant Bernard in NJPW. Many people, including myself, were very excited at the time that Bloom’s WWE return was announced as there had been so much talk about the transformation he had gone through while wrestling overseas. This was a DOA gimmick that the crowd never cared about and the announcers never tried to get over. His manager, Sakamoto, lasted only a few months with him and before long he was back to the Hip Hop Hippo V2. The “Lord” part of his name lasted even less time than that. The only good thing that came out of this gimmick was the bad ass Mattel Elite figure that was made for it.
4. Headbanger Mosh to Beaver Cleavage – This is a name that can only have been thought of during the Attitude Era. The promos leading up to Cleavage debuting were some of the most hilariously terrible things to grace a WWF program in 1999. The gimmick was supposed to be a modern day “Leave it to Beaver” play off but just like Tensai was DOA. Honestly the only reason this is not higher is because the gimmick lasted less than a month, 2 months if you count the vignettes. Mosh would return to his headbanger role and then joined D’Lo Brown under the name Chaz to form Lo Down before he was released.
3. Isaac Yankem DDS to Diesel II – There is little argument to be made that Yankem had worn out his welcome in the WWF, but there is NO DOUBT that Diesel II wore out his welcome the second he appeared on TV. For weeks JR was hyping that he was bringing back Nash and Ramon, and then they finally debuted and the fans hated it instantly. Thankfully WWF realized their mistake and Diesel was taken off TV after a few months. In a much happier twist than the previous two entries, Glenn Jacobs has now been playing Kane for nearly 20 years.
2. Chavo Guerrero to Kerwin White – I expect to see this at, or around, the top of many lists here. This was the gimmick that first popped into my head when I read the category. But when I really got thinking, I realized that the long term ramifications of this were not really that bad. Once Chavo became a Raw talent he renounced his Guerrero name and became a middle-class, white, conservative, Anglo-American man. The gimmick was terrible and could have easily led to Dolph Ziggler never becoming the misused superstar that he is today. Thankfully, the gimmick was dropped at the untimely death of Uncle Eddie.
1. Rey Mysterio (Masked Luchador to Unmasked Scrub) – Mysterio competed in WCW for 3 years under a mask and was a constant fan favorite. Part of the lure with Mysterio and many of the luchadors is their mask, so it made “WCW sense” to get the masks off as many of them as they can. Rey competed for the last 2 years of WCW without his mask and was never really taken seriously again until his re-masked WWE debut in 2002. Mysterio’s face just made him look like more of a child and nothing quite clicked the same way as masked Mysterio. This remains one of the biggest flubs for me in WCW as Mysterio just didn’t feel right as a member of The Filthy Animals, or wearing those ridiculous horns. The previous 4 gimmicks lasted around a year total, we were stuck with this terrible Mysterio version for the final 20 months of WCW.
Kevin Pantoja
5. Mosh to Beaver Cleavage – I’m not counting any gimmick changes that crossed promotions like Goldust becoming Seven or Black Reign or anything like that. With that out of the way, we’re looking at the Beaver Cleavage character. 1999 was a time for some incredibly off the wall things in the WWE, but this it right near the top. Gone was Headbanger Mosh and in his place was a character that parodied the old “Leave it to Beaver” show. It was another example of the WWE being quite behind on the times of what is considered cool. It also showed Vince’s love for incest angles (like his pitched story of impregnating Stephanie and what he wanted for Paul Burchill and Katie Lea), since Beaver was always into his mom’s rack. The only reason this doesn’t rank higher is because Headbanger Mosh wasn’t doing too hot and this abomination only lasted about a month.
4. Billy Gunn to Mr. Ass – I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of Billy Gunn. I thought he was solid in the ring but never a main event level guy like so many people believed. His only real singles push completely failed but even I can’t fully put the blame on him. He was called Mr. Ass in a joking manner by the Road Dogg, but when he went solo, someone decided that should be his name and gimmick. It’s impossible to take someone called Mr. Ass seriously. His entire character was based around his love for ass. His theme song, titantron, attire and even his highest profile match, the “Kiss My Ass” match, were all built about rear ends. Such a terrible idea.
3. D-Von Dudley to Reverend D-Von – During the 2002 brand split, the Dudley Boyz got drafted separately, splitting one of the greatest tag teams in history. They were just about hitting the point of being a stale act, so the plan to split them made some sense. Bubba Ray mostly kept the Dudley character on Raw, but D-Von was the unlucky one. He was saddled with a Reverend gimmick, which failed miserably. That kind of character just isn’t going to work in the wrestling industry unless it’s way over the top and that wasn’t the case here. The only good thing to come from this whole thing was Batista.
2. Chavo Guerrero to Kerwin White – What do you do when you have one of the most recognizable Hispanic wrestlers on the planet? Easy. You turn him into a white guy. I don’t know who thought this would be a good idea, but having Chavo give up the Guerrero name and become Kerwin White was among the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. It’s especially hard to fathom when you remember just how proud Chavo is of his Mexican heritage and the fact that he’s a member of one of the most important families in wrestling history. Once Eddie Guerrero untimely passed away, they dropped the gimmick, though it was too late for it to not miss this list.
1. The Narcissist to All American Lex Luger – Lex Luger had a pretty successful career. He won multiple world titles and will most likely make it to the Hall of Fame. But, if there was ever someone who screamed heel, only to be miscast as a babyface so many times, it was Luger. Look at him. He had the face of someone you wanted to punch. When he arrived in the WWE in 1993 as the Narcissist, it was perfect. Here’s a guy built like a Greek god, so let him play that up. He had the cool entrance with the mirrors and could have been a great foil to Bret Hart down the line in 1993. Then WrestleMania IX happened and it all went to shit. Hogan was champion, but was on his way out. Yokozuna got the title back and needed a new opponent. So they turned Luger face, made him a knockoff Hogan and gave him the ridiculous Lex Express. I hate anti and pro-American gimmicks with a passion and this might have been the worst ever. Luger never got over like they wanted him to an ended up failing time after time after time in big matches. He was one giant failure in his WWF run, doing nothing of note before heading back to WCW.
List your Top Five for this week’s topic in the comment section using the following format:
5. CHOICE: Explanation
4. CHOICE: Explanation
3. CHOICE: Explanation
2. CHOICE: Explanation
1. CHOICE: Explanation
