The Fake Undertaker in my childhood was great point of discussion. We went hours and hours of arguments and discussion in our school over who is real and who is fake, which one is living and which one is deadman. One of coolest storyline.
It was former Smoky Mountain Wrestling champion Brian Lee, who had worked with Skip and Sunny when they were Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch. Lee would go on to become Chainz, a member of the Diciples Of Apocalypse with Crush and the talentless Harris brothers who used the names Skull & 8-Ball. Before that they were Jacob & Eli Blu. Uccccch!
A note about the Saba Simba gimmick. While some people saw the gimmick as being racist or beneath Tony Atlas, when the then WWF contacted Atlas and offered him the gimmick, he was broke, unemployed, and homeless, sleeping on park benches at night (when he could get away with it). So as bad as that gimmick might be, it literally saved Tony Atlas's life.
@@tomseville2345 My point is that Tony Atlas is to this day very thankful to Vince McMahon for allowing him to portray Saba Simba because it saved him from poverty and homelessness.
@@tomseville2345 yeah it wasnt ever like that. Despite anything the internet or whatever says. majority of the people to ever work at wwe have nothing negative to say about Vince. Which includes tony atlas.
To show that sometimes it's all about the execution, the luchador Taurus has the same gimmick, but it works really well for him. Having a decent mask helps.
6:05 Correction: Leviathan was OVW, not FCW. And differing opinion, it wasn’t that bad. I was at an OVW show with Leviathan/Batista on the card, and it was easy to see that this guy was going to be a star. The gimmick was a little hokey, but he still wrestled like a badass.
@@Craig-bz2iu I never watched at the time beyond that show, but even going back and watching Batista/Leviathan…was it the best gimmick in the world? No, but it was far from the worst.
@@zlinedavid tbh, I quite like his match he had with Kane and when Kane still had his mask on and suffice to say, before that stuff kicked off with the Katy Vick storyline with HHH. Simply gross 🤮.
So Nailz, the SA'd ex-convict gimmick who never took his prison outfit off, and the Berserker, a Viking who only ever learned to speak one syllable from birth, were somehow not bad enough to be on this list??
Nailz wasn't that bad let's be real it was rather entertaining for me are u stupid nailz was a perfect opposite of big boss man imo best of big boss mans work u gotta understand THE reasoning for a gimmick rather then call it trash 🤣
@@matthewmulholland1797 understandable it's hard to pull off a ex con character that's why I like to give nailz the benefit of the doubt as he was brought in specifically for one person and did it justice compared to say giant Gonzalez or Zeus
@@jamesAGarfield608 Taking things a bit too personally, dont you think, by calling me "stupid"? Just shows you have an emotional maturity equivalent to a 5-year old. And maybe pay a bit more attention to what I'm saying and you can see the point I'm making. The gimmick was a convict RELEASED FROM PRISON. Yet, every time he showed in the ring he was wearing a prison outfit. Even as young as I was when I was seeing this in the age of kayfabe, I was noticing how dumb it was to present a released convict in his prison uniform.
Black Reign and Vinnie Vegas were pretty good, I remember them being well received. And maybe a guilty pleasure, but I personally enjoyed Taker v Taker at Summerslam 94 🤷♂️
I didn’t think Vinnie Vegas was all that bad either, compared to some of the ridiculous stuff they had going on at the time. Dude was a gangster/gambler.
I remember taker vs taker being well received tbh. Living through many of these, it was often also really great for thr audience to get back about stuff, have something to hate just for the sheer stupidness of it, and in that case it could be said some of the worst here, may have been very well received.. I guess that is the difference between a video that speaks facts, vs a video where the narrator offers their opinion as fact. Which is why I dislike RUclips tbh. Too much of people's personal opinions being sold as fact. 🤷♀️
@@CaptainAMAZINGGGthe two undertakers would have been devastating as a tag team but the referee would be having trouble distinguishing which one is which. Basically how Don and Ron Harris got wins in WCW.
One important detail to note about the Knuckleball gimmick is that Major League Baseball was on a notorious players' strike at the time, and the gimmick was WWE's attempt to cash in on those headlines. So it's not as random as it seems at first glance, but in context it's clear that the gimmick was pandering and pathetic, which arguably makes it even worse.
Yeah I thought it wasn’t that bad, chucking cans of rubbish on people like Jerry Lawler was quite funny lol The narrator got the year completely wrong though, he said debuted in 96 but it was like mid 94.
The Renegade was literally created because WCW had teased the actual Ultimate Warrior coming on board, but negotiations had fallen through, so they'd gone with the 'we have Ultimate Warrior at home'/Wish version.
Seven was the rip off gimmick of the Undertaker, providing the fact that the same guy who was Golddust portrayed himself as a pedophile when he did that role in WCW.
Mickie James is cute. There is no way she is even that fat. And she has had a lot of people desire her before. Laycool were monsters for bullying her. Layla and Michelle are plastic and not worth looking at.
1. ECW Zombie was not supposed to be a serious character. 2. Holy crap, I didn't know about the Nazi and Klan gimmicks. How the hell aren't they 1 and 2?
One of the worst matches that Jesse and Festus had was with the Undertaker in a handicap match where they lost dramatically and were traumatized by the Deadman quite easily
it's amazing how some of the best wrestlers would end up starting their careers with the most god awful of gimmicks. and that's not even mentioning those who started great, only to get worse.
The only good thing that came out of Brodus Clay’s Funkasaurus run was that the WWE universe was introduced to Naomi, one of the greatest female performers ever.
One thing the games did good was that Festus was the only character with a scripted match attack. Every single match, he'd perform his taunt and run at you.
24:31 The funny thing about Kwang is that it is based on Savio Vega's original gimmick here in Puerto Rico called TNT. Instead of a mask he wore facepaint similar to that of Hawk from the Road Warriors. While in the WWF it flopped here in PR is one of the most over characters of all time.
When I was a kid, gimmicks like Duke, the dumpster, avatar, Aldo Montoya, and max moon were my favorite wrestlers. Don't get me wrong they were never in the upper tier of my faves, Bret hart, owen hart, randy savage, and hbk, but I still liked those characters.
Bastion Booger was suppose to be on the bill at a Grand Prix wrestling event in Nova Scotia but he didn’t show up. Promoters said “he couldn’t fit on the bus”
I though the goon was actually a fun gimick, the idea is not that bad, a hockey player that is so violent he has been banned from every leauge, as well has having a hockey stick as a weapon. There are much worst on this list!
I find this strangely reassuring....wcw actually did try to use Brad Armstrong apparently! Always thought it was such a waste of talent, now I think he must have pumped someone from creatives' wife! Spiderman gimmick 🤣
He was also briefly the Candyman, and later Buzzkill, when WCW told him to "get a personality" and start acting exactly like his more famous brother (Road Dogg Jesse James).
The One Man Gang becoming Akeem the African Dream and talking the way he did was Vince McMahon taking another shot at Dusty Rhodes known as the American Dream.
The KISS Demon was cool...on paper, and I think Dale Torburg did the best he could with it, but the role was originally intended for Brian Adams (as in the former Crush and not the Canadian singer). Adams played the character once but he decided against doing it long term and so a replacement needed to be found and fast. Torburg was barely out of training when he was called up to play a character that was going to have a lot of screen time thanks to the deal with KISS. I think had he been given some more time before being pushed into the spotlight, he could have made it work. KISS were a big deal at the time and there's always been a cross over between wrestling fans and the KISS army, so it could have been a winner. The plan was to eventually have a full KISS stable with wrestlers portraying the 4 iconic KISS characters, but due to changes in WCW management, this never happened. It would have been interesting to see how it might have played out and which wrestlers would have been The Starchild, Space Ace and Catman.
I disagree. It was a cheesy Russo inspired gimmick that was never going to connect with the majority of WCW fans at that time. KISS may have had some nostalgia value, but in 1999 their music was absolute garbage. The majority of the WCW fans at the time were young and didn't care about KISS. If anything, it really illustrated how much WCW was losing touch with its own fanbase and was in panic mode from plummeting ratings, flinging spaghetti at a wall to see what stuck. At least for KISS it was a smart move from a business perspective since they had started touring again and were pushing an awful album. But the fan reception to the demon was so lackluster, there was no way leaning harder into a gimmick based on 1970s rock band was going to get over, especially with Russo and Ferrera at the helm of that sinking ship.
I don't think the Damien Demento character was all that bad to be honest. Had they given him some more time and something/someone to work with, things might have turned out differently. PG-13 don't even belong on this list. They were pretty funny and really knew how to work a crowd as heels. There have been gimmicks that were way worse and didn't even make the list, like "Mr Hole-in-One" Barry Darsow, Nailz, Glacier, Well Dunn, The Sultan and Aldo Montoya. Just to name a few.
I'm just glad Rosey's S.H.I.T (Super Hero In Training) gimmick wasn't included. I actually enjoyed it P.S now you should do the Top 100 Best Gimmicks of All Time
@@BlondeRockChick absolutely, just like he accused Beaver Cleavage of making fun of him as a boy. But that was part of his plan, as he said in a Playboy magazine he was abused by his own mother.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling started in 1991 and closed in 1995. The Storm Trooper did appear there a few times in 1992 and he did debut in 1988, but he didn't debut in SMW. From what I've found online, wrestled his last match under the gimmick in 2013.
@@Wrestlelamia well yeah, he was not that good, but if you look at his last promo before Wrestlemania 9 “the one where he was wearing a suit” he showed a bit of emotion, if he switched outfits, he may have been remembered more then that goofy muscle suit
PG-13 was a badass team! Bad raps?! When they joined the Nation of Nomination, their raps helped make the NOD's entrance great! Their presence on this list is nonsense.
The Renegade’s gimmick and what people thought at the time was basically Ultimate Warrior on WCW. I think considering the history of The Renegade and how the wrestler ended his life with how WCW treated him after they couldn’t milk the gimmick.
@@SWWonders Yeah but the video simply talked how The Renegade gimmick was absurd and it would never work, but IT did work for a time until fans discovered that The Renegade was not The Ultimate Warrior in "disguise", which then the company flipped on the wrestler and spent time humiliating him until it led to the man himself "deleting" himself. That's not a failed gimmick, that was something worse.
@@mr.badguy8500 Rick Williams was a terrible worker, he had no clue how to even throw a decent dropkick. WCW wanting fans to believe he WAS the Ultimate Warrior was a huge insult to their intelligence. You're right about how they humiliated him after he failed to get over, though.
I thought that the "Toxic Turtles" would make this list... Apparently Vince thought that they could ride on the coattails of the Ninja Turtles popularity back in the late 80's... Search for them and chuckle...
The “Piggy James” gimmick shouldn’t really count. It was a verbal attack, not a real gimmick Mickey ever actually embraced. Just LeCool “mean-girling” her.
A McCool who really hated those segments and period. She really felt sorry for Mickie, same thing for Layla. Remain one of the worst angle in WWE history.
Mickie James is really pretty in some ways. And she has a gorgeous voice singing her country and western music of her own. She has made more of a career of herself than those two plastics Layla and Michelle
@@Craig-bz2iuBut he was a babyface (except just before he was fired), who usually dished it out to the bullies. Plus, Dinsmore was excellent in the role.
According to Bruce Pritchard - Brutus Beefcake, as the Run In Man was simply to get him some time back in the ring and get some confidence back after his accident where he basically had his face reconstructed. Wanted to make sure there would be no medical side affects to it.
I feel like quite a few of these *could* have worked if the execution was a little better or the performer had the talent to perform in the ring. Sometimes its how far into a gimmick people go, like the minotaur is obviously terrible, but in essence the same is achieved by Rhyno, just a lot less literally. I liked the look of both the fantasio and knuckleball characters! Also i dont know why, but every time you said tugboat and we saw him on screen in his red and white striped top it cracked me up 😂
The Real Double J could have been something. Garth Brooks was a big star at the time and I think that was what they were going with with that gimmick. Having the former roadie revealed as the real singer is something that has been done in movies and tv shows for years. It was also a good way to have Road Dogg show off his singing voice. It made sense at the time, it just didn't work as well as they had hoped. It did lead to him finding his true calling though as he was always feuding with Rockabilly (formerly and latterly Billy Gunn).
I had forgotten they did that to the one man gang. I really liked OMG and that change just pissed me off. You had this awesome gimmick and they made him some weird dancer.
@@fro-zone2k I suppose it helps because the Rock and Stone Cold stood up for Eugene and they showed sympathy to some special needs people with their face characters
A guy just being reborn as African is so hilariously, offensively bad that it's kinda good. Like how a comedy would parody wrestling. ...But it actually happened in wrestling. Unreal.
@@michaelkrolewski7406 Piggy James was a storyline in which two heel wrestlers mocked a face wrestler. For it to be a gimmick Mickie James would have been walking around in a pig costume oinking at people. To put it another way: Terry Taylor as the Red Rooster was a gimmick. the nWo dressing up like the Horsemen to mock them (or D-X dressing up like the Nation of Domination, for the same reason) was an angle.
What made the Oklahoma gimmick worse was having Steve Williams involved. He and JR had a great relationship, so it must've hurt Steve to do that for a job. He also had bills to pay.
Ferrara deserved to have been sued, if not beaten, for Oklahoma. Then again, him being involved in wrestling should be punished as well. And Dr. Death should've been embarrassed for going along with it, no matter what they were paying him.
Seriously, Becky Lynch as an Irish dancer isn't even the fourth worst gimmick, let alone a top ten worst gimmick. You have gimmicks like Bastion Booger, Saba Simba, Tommy Dreamer as El Diablo in IWCCW, Red Rooster, TL Hopper, Gobbledy Gooker, The Creator (an independent manager), and other much worse gimmicks.
it was incredibly successful actually, right until the point that the cat was let out of the bag, that Eugene wasnt special. many disabled WWE fans looked up to Eugene.
6:51 the looks on the audience's faces. How did Guerrero get talked into this one?!? And now I can not stop seeing in my mind Mean Gene doing the do-si-do with Guerrero in a chicken outfit at 7:00
Phantasio is actually a really cool idea for a wrestling gimmick. A magician who uses tricks to win matches.
I thought the same thing! Seems kinda fun if pulled off correctly.
Is that you, Glenn Gilberti?
Until the FIRE!!! issue
Danbausen kinda does it and has gotten over
Right
The Fake Undertaker in my childhood was great point of discussion. We went hours and hours of arguments and discussion in our school over who is real and who is fake, which one is living and which one is deadman. One of coolest storyline.
I like the Fake Undertaker story
It was former Smoky Mountain Wrestling champion Brian Lee, who had worked with Skip and Sunny when they were Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch. Lee would go on to become Chainz, a member of the Diciples Of Apocalypse with Crush and the talentless Harris brothers who used the names Skull & 8-Ball. Before that they were Jacob & Eli Blu. Uccccch!
Imposter Kane in 2006 for the sponsorship towards See No Evil that Z grade slasher movie Kane was in.
For me when it comes to terrible gimmicks, WCW had the quantity while WWF/WWE had the quality
WCW was a terrible gimmick.
Sorry but No 1 beats WWE for stupidity
Predator vince was the king of bad gimmicks & segments 😆🤣🤦♂️
A
Put it perfectly
FAKE RAZOR & FAKE DIESEL???…PLEASE…PEOPLE JUST HATE ON WCW BECAUSE WWE BOUGHT IT & IT GIVES THEM SOMETHING TO HATE
"We're out of ideas."
"Lets try something racist."
"That didn't work, try Trish and Stacy bra and panties match."
@@tripsaplenty1227"damn ... that didn't work either - get the cripple and the retard"
A note about the Saba Simba gimmick. While some people saw the gimmick as being racist or beneath Tony Atlas, when the then WWF contacted Atlas and offered him the gimmick, he was broke, unemployed, and homeless, sleeping on park benches at night (when he could get away with it). So as bad as that gimmick might be, it literally saved Tony Atlas's life.
Actually, that would make it worse. Come and do this gimmick, Tony. Or else it's back to the park with you...
@@tomseville2345 My point is that Tony Atlas is to this day very thankful to Vince McMahon for allowing him to portray Saba Simba because it saved him from poverty and homelessness.
@@tomseville2345 yeah it wasnt ever like that. Despite anything the internet or whatever says. majority of the people to ever work at wwe have nothing negative to say about Vince. Which includes tony atlas.
Soft generation, I see.
@@tomseville2345
They coulda saved his life letting him be Tony Atlas
WWE absolutely WASTED DDP, and you will never convince me otherwise.
He was crap!
@@Craig-bz2iusteiner was a different wrestler, too bulky so fans booed him bc he wasn't as athletic and was only doing d
Suplexes.
23:42 moppy was punishment. You should say that
@@Craig-bz2iuhow is king booker racist?
Agreed
According to Vince doing commentary during one of his matches, Mantaur was actually half-man half-Minotaur....
To show that sometimes it's all about the execution, the luchador Taurus has the same gimmick, but it works really well for him. Having a decent mask helps.
Which would make him only a quarter bull I believe. Which would explain why he can transform his face to look more human I suppose.
He just recently died RIP Mantaur.
duh. we figured that out.
which is a little confusing as a minotaur is half man half bull - so was he only a quarter bull? 😅
I loved Tugboat, Red Rooster and Akeem back in the day.
Have to make a correction for you. Friar Ferguson and Bastion Booger were portrayed by Mike SHAW not Mike Bell.
Wasn’t Mike Bell the wrestler who Saturn concussed bc he missed a spot?
@@danielmankowski922 That is correct.
You are correct, sir.
He needs to study wrestling gimmicks a little bit more to make a list like this without the GOBBLEDY GOOKER
@@mr.marino9247 Pretty sure the Gobbledy Gooker IS on this list, kinda remember in the 70's maybe? But he's on here for sure...
6:05 Correction: Leviathan was OVW, not FCW. And differing opinion, it wasn’t that bad. I was at an OVW show with Leviathan/Batista on the card, and it was easy to see that this guy was going to be a star. The gimmick was a little hokey, but he still wrestled like a badass.
Now I remember why I stopped watching this channel, too many easy mistakes that irritated me.
I never got into OVW, it was boring and cringy
@@Craig-bz2iu I never watched at the time beyond that show, but even going back and watching Batista/Leviathan…was it the best gimmick in the world? No, but it was far from the worst.
@@zlinedavid tbh, I quite like his match he had with Kane and when Kane still had his mask on and suffice to say, before that stuff kicked off with the Katy Vick storyline with HHH. Simply gross 🤮.
Batista really had no gimmick in the wwe If you think about it.
So Nailz, the SA'd ex-convict gimmick who never took his prison outfit off, and the Berserker, a Viking who only ever learned to speak one syllable from birth, were somehow not bad enough to be on this list??
He doesn’t want Nailz to come choke him out like he did to Vince
Nailz wasn't that bad let's be real it was rather entertaining for me are u stupid nailz was a perfect opposite of big boss man imo best of big boss mans work u gotta understand THE reasoning for a gimmick rather then call it trash 🤣
@@matthewmulholland1797 understandable it's hard to pull off a ex con character that's why I like to give nailz the benefit of the doubt as he was brought in specifically for one person and did it justice compared to say giant Gonzalez or Zeus
And for the record I do agree berserker shoulda been added on here but Zeus was arguably way worse then nailz and he was also not added
@@jamesAGarfield608 Taking things a bit too personally, dont you think, by calling me "stupid"? Just shows you have an emotional maturity equivalent to a 5-year old. And maybe pay a bit more attention to what I'm saying and you can see the point I'm making. The gimmick was a convict RELEASED FROM PRISON. Yet, every time he showed in the ring he was wearing a prison outfit. Even as young as I was when I was seeing this in the age of kayfabe, I was noticing how dumb it was to present a released convict in his prison uniform.
Black Reign and Vinnie Vegas were pretty good, I remember them being well received. And maybe a guilty pleasure, but I personally enjoyed Taker v Taker at Summerslam 94 🤷♂️
I didn’t think Vinnie Vegas was all that bad either, compared to some of the ridiculous stuff they had going on at the time. Dude was a gangster/gambler.
😂😂
@@zlinedavid”I’m gunna take this toilet lid sized hand, and smack the taste outta ya mouth!”
I remember taker vs taker being well received tbh. Living through many of these, it was often also really great for thr audience to get back about stuff, have something to hate just for the sheer stupidness of it, and in that case it could be said some of the worst here, may have been very well received..
I guess that is the difference between a video that speaks facts, vs a video where the narrator offers their opinion as fact. Which is why I dislike RUclips tbh. Too much of people's personal opinions being sold as fact. 🤷♀️
@@CaptainAMAZINGGGthe two undertakers would have been devastating as a tag team but the referee would be having trouble distinguishing which one is which. Basically how Don and Ron Harris got wins in WCW.
One important detail to note about the Knuckleball gimmick is that Major League Baseball was on a notorious players' strike at the time, and the gimmick was WWE's attempt to cash in on those headlines. So it's not as random as it seems at first glance, but in context it's clear that the gimmick was pandering and pathetic, which arguably makes it even worse.
I wasn't watching WWE back in 1994, but didn't they add a tagline to the Knuckleball gimmick that "We never go on strike"?
@@ianhealy5169I think it was “We never strike out” but I could be hella wrong LOL
I liked Duke The Dumpster when I was younger. I thought he was fun
I had the opportunity to meet him in 1995 SummerSlam really nice guy
Yeah I thought it wasn’t that bad, chucking cans of rubbish on people like Jerry Lawler was quite funny lol
The narrator got the year completely wrong though, he said debuted in 96 but it was like mid 94.
ive always liked him. ive never faltered. fake fans like you are killing wrestling
Why would he not connect with fans, he had a hard-working honest job, of course fans love a face like that.
@@edgybandkid9407 omg stop it 😭
The Renegade was literally created because WCW had teased the actual Ultimate Warrior coming on board, but negotiations had fallen through, so they'd gone with the 'we have Ultimate Warrior at home'/Wish version.
Temu version
Seven was the rip off gimmick of the Undertaker, providing the fact that the same guy who was Golddust portrayed himself as a pedophile when he did that role in WCW.
@@Craig-bz2iu”the same guy who was Golddust” just say Dustin Rhodes.
So many of these are not gimmicks, they're just very short storylines (Piggy James, Big Show as a baby, Shelton Benjamin's Momma, etc...)
Saved me a comment. 😏
That's kind of what a gimmick is tho 😂😂
@@dyoung12b haha exactly...short lived to an extent
Mickie James is cute. There is no way she is even that fat. And she has had a lot of people desire her before. Laycool were monsters for bullying her. Layla and Michelle are plastic and not worth looking at.
@dyoung12b not all the time. Sometimes, a storyline can involves wrestlers whose gimmicks are intact.
1. ECW Zombie was not supposed to be a serious character.
2. Holy crap, I didn't know about the Nazi and Klan gimmicks. How the hell aren't they 1 and 2?
Seven was played by Golddust or the same guy who was Goldust and his character in WCW was a suspected pedophile
Yeah i wonder this too, most above them its just generic
Yeah who made the people in two
It's funny that the Bastion Booger's finishing move was to teabag his opponent.
The fact they were able to bridge the Festus character And give a smart in universe explanation makes it one of the best. Also made for a great story.
Festus was terrible, but he's doing just fine nowadays, as one of the Good Brothers.
One of the worst matches that Jesse and Festus had was with the Undertaker in a handicap match where they lost dramatically and were traumatized by the Deadman quite easily
One of the worst matches they had was with Undertaker where they got scared witless in the end
its fake bro calm down@@Craig-bz2iu
"Biscuits and gravyyy'
Batista as “Leviathan” was pretty successful in OVW, actually. His gimmick does not belong on this list.
it's amazing how some of the best wrestlers would end up starting their careers with the most god awful of gimmicks. and that's not even mentioning those who started great, only to get worse.
Kwang, Farooq, Giant Gonzalez shouldn’t be on this list… they were alright
miss Salvatore Sincere,The Berzerker,the bushwakers, and many more.
The only good thing that came out of Brodus Clay’s Funkasaurus run was that the WWE universe was introduced to Naomi, one of the greatest female performers ever.
I know the word "underatted" gets thrown a lot but I truly think Naomi was underrated in WWE. At least she's thriving in Impact
@@theharv1490 Agreed. She’s arguably the best thing about Impact now too. I’m glad she’s in a better place where she can just be herself now.
One of the greatest female performers ever? My brother in Christ are you serious?
One of the sexiest for sure.
Naomi was introduced in season 3 of NXT when it was a competition show. Kaitlyn won season 3 with her pro Vickie Guerrero.
One thing the games did good was that Festus was the only character with a scripted match attack. Every single match, he'd perform his taunt and run at you.
"The Ding Dongs gimmick is hard to explain"...? That line was the highlight of this video for me
The Ding Dongs make the Dungeon Of Doom look serious.
24:31
The funny thing about Kwang is that it is based on Savio Vega's original gimmick here in Puerto Rico called TNT. Instead of a mask he wore facepaint similar to that of Hawk from the Road Warriors. While in the WWF it flopped here in PR is one of the most over characters of all time.
Awesome list! But kind of weird how Festus is #3, while Eugene is not listed at all.
yeah I expected Eugene to be #1
The Shark did suck, but everyone liked Shark-boy.
Bastion Booger was a demonstrably bad gimmick, but 14 year old me loved it, because 14 year old me in the 90s was an immature little asshole.
As was the guy who gave him the gimmick. 😂
Nowadays, most of the US is Bastion Booger. The gimmick has been given life million-fold.
When I was a kid, gimmicks like Duke, the dumpster, avatar, Aldo Montoya, and max moon were my favorite wrestlers. Don't get me wrong they were never in the upper tier of my faves, Bret hart, owen hart, randy savage, and hbk, but I still liked those characters.
Piggy James was an angle not a gimmick lol
On the worst in history!
Mickie should have had a long reign after the victory at RR 2010.
I wouldn't mind guessing her weight.
I agree a few of the lists were angles not gimmicks
Mickie is not that fat. Plus she is quite good looking to. Michelle and Layla are fakes and Barbie dolls. Plastic ho’s.
Piggy 🐷 James was too funny 😂
Bastion Booger was suppose to be on the bill at a Grand Prix wrestling event in Nova Scotia but he didn’t show up. Promoters said “he couldn’t fit on the bus”
I though the goon was actually a fun gimick, the idea is not that bad, a hockey player that is so violent he has been banned from every leauge, as well has having a hockey stick as a weapon. There are much worst on this list!
I find this strangely reassuring....wcw actually did try to use Brad Armstrong apparently! Always thought it was such a waste of talent, now I think he must have pumped someone from creatives' wife! Spiderman gimmick 🤣
He was also briefly the Candyman, and later Buzzkill, when WCW told him to "get a personality" and start acting exactly like his more famous brother (Road Dogg Jesse James).
Kane used to be Isaac Yankem that wacky dentist in WCW
The One Man Gang becoming Akeem the African Dream and talking the way he did was Vince McMahon taking another shot at Dusty Rhodes known as the American Dream.
Whoa!!!!!!! 🤯 FR
I loved that character and defend it to this day. Akeem was awesome, and Jive Soul Bro suited him perfectly.
Hilarious, because Dusty would be in the WWF alongside Akeem in that gimmick from mid-89 to when Akeem left in 1990...
As a child I thought hogan was corney. Then came akeem and dusty. On to wcw.
I heard it was also punishment from Vince.
The KISS Demon was cool...on paper, and I think Dale Torburg did the best he could with it, but the role was originally intended for Brian Adams (as in the former Crush and not the Canadian singer). Adams played the character once but he decided against doing it long term and so a replacement needed to be found and fast. Torburg was barely out of training when he was called up to play a character that was going to have a lot of screen time thanks to the deal with KISS. I think had he been given some more time before being pushed into the spotlight, he could have made it work. KISS were a big deal at the time and there's always been a cross over between wrestling fans and the KISS army, so it could have been a winner. The plan was to eventually have a full KISS stable with wrestlers portraying the 4 iconic KISS characters, but due to changes in WCW management, this never happened. It would have been interesting to see how it might have played out and which wrestlers would have been The Starchild, Space Ace and Catman.
Gene Simmons rocks !
I disagree. It was a cheesy Russo inspired gimmick that was never going to connect with the majority of WCW fans at that time. KISS may have had some nostalgia value, but in 1999 their music was absolute garbage. The majority of the WCW fans at the time were young and didn't care about KISS. If anything, it really illustrated how much WCW was losing touch with its own fanbase and was in panic mode from plummeting ratings, flinging spaghetti at a wall to see what stuck. At least for KISS it was a smart move from a business perspective since they had started touring again and were pushing an awful album. But the fan reception to the demon was so lackluster, there was no way leaning harder into a gimmick based on 1970s rock band was going to get over, especially with Russo and Ferrera at the helm of that sinking ship.
I don't think the Damien Demento character was all that bad to be honest. Had they given him some more time and something/someone to work with, things might have turned out differently. PG-13 don't even belong on this list. They were pretty funny and really knew how to work a crowd as heels. There have been gimmicks that were way worse and didn't even make the list, like "Mr Hole-in-One" Barry Darsow, Nailz, Glacier, Well Dunn, The Sultan and Aldo Montoya. Just to name a few.
PG-13 Baby - checkout some of their USWA matches…
@@FrancisJFox yes, I've seen some of their stuff in USWA back in the day. That's why I think they don't belong on this list :)
Repo Man also
Glad to see Papa Shango NOT on the list...but notably bad ones you missed included Loch Ness, Mr Hole in One Barry Darsow and EUGENE
Eugene was the act of a guy with learning difficulties and that was well and truly sick
Oh, get over yourselves. Eugene was awesome!
@@jamesrelford4560 Nope even thinking how offensive he was it was a dumb gimmick that ruined the career of a promising athelete
I'm just glad Rosey's S.H.I.T (Super Hero In Training) gimmick wasn't included. I actually enjoyed it
P.S now you should do the Top 100 Best Gimmicks of All Time
Undertaker #1
well i dont even think that needed saying, i mean let's be real here.@@earlthepearl6414
not a bad gimmick tbh the fans loved him and Rosey was loving it and it worked
i thought it was funny. XD@@adheremtmeat
Ice Train is #1.
Vince McMahon came out with most of these stories. And he had no problems with them either.
And I’m sure when they failed he blamed the wrestler playing that character he chose and made them play!!
@@BlondeRockChick absolutely, just like he accused Beaver Cleavage of making fun of him as a boy. But that was part of his plan, as he said in a Playboy magazine he was abused by his own mother.
Wrestling needs bad gimmicks, adds charm. Better to have bad characters than no characters
Facts. The worst gimmick is frat bros and gym bros with "charisma".
I see where you’re going with this.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling started in 1991 and closed in 1995. The Storm Trooper did appear there a few times in 1992 and he did debut in 1988, but he didn't debut in SMW. From what I've found online, wrestled his last match under the gimmick in 2013.
Probably pointed out but Batista was never in FCW he was in the legendary class of OVW that at gave us Cena, Lesnar, and Orton
Sheamus was FCW though
26:33 fun fact: Rick Bognar was a member of the nWo(japan)
SCRYPTS aka Reggie was the first person who came to mind. Also Wendy Choo as well
The Yeti....oh wait do you mean THE YETAYYYY!!?
the only reason why Giant Gonzales failed, was his outfit
I fully believe if he had something like a brown version of the Big Show's he'd been over.
His movement was still very limited. He had Andre's problem of acromegaly. Big Show doesn't have that problem as he had surgery to correct it.
@@Wrestlelamia well yeah, he was not that good, but if you look at his last promo before Wrestlemania 9 “the one where he was wearing a suit” he showed a bit of emotion, if he switched outfits, he may have been remembered more then that goofy muscle suit
He was so immobile
PG-13 was a badass team! Bad raps?! When they joined the Nation of Nomination, their raps helped make the NOD's entrance great!
Their presence on this list is nonsense.
This is actually a pretty great list by the looks of the thumbnail. But don't you dare include The Repo Man!
Repo man was cool af
Why do you show him at the beginning?@@Wrestlelamia
@@tomseville2345 Vince Russo: We call dat a *SWERVE!*
Some consider it a bad gimmick. He didn't make the list.@@tomseville2345
Repo man was cool .He stole the Hat of ?
That farooq look definitely inspired the version of juggernaut vinnie jones played in x-men 3.
Also the helmet he wore looks like that of Judge Dredd or possibly Magneto
@@Craig-bz2iu megaman
@@LordDeBahs Captain Falcon
Happy Thanksgiving All 🦃👋
Happy Thanksgiving 🍁🍽 y’all.
I smashed lady gaga last night on the 50 yard line of Giants stadium
Happy Thanksgiving 🦃
Grateful for y’all
@@JohnnyM3991 👍
Hey guys Im pretty sure it's Mike shaw not Mike bell ...love the channel!!
The Renegade’s gimmick and what people thought at the time was basically Ultimate Warrior on WCW. I think considering the history of The Renegade and how the wrestler ended his life with how WCW treated him after they couldn’t milk the gimmick.
Yeah that’s what the whole clip was about
@@SWWonders Yeah but the video simply talked how The Renegade gimmick was absurd and it would never work, but IT did work for a time until fans discovered that The Renegade was not The Ultimate Warrior in "disguise", which then the company flipped on the wrestler and spent time humiliating him until it led to the man himself "deleting" himself.
That's not a failed gimmick, that was something worse.
@@mr.badguy8500good point
@@mr.badguy8500 Rick Williams was a terrible worker, he had no clue how to even throw a decent dropkick. WCW wanting fans to believe he WAS the Ultimate Warrior was a huge insult to their intelligence. You're right about how they humiliated him after he failed to get over, though.
It didn't help that Hogan teased his debut by calling him "the ultimate surprise."
8:10 Another correction. The stormtrooper couldn’t have debuted in 1988 in Smokey Mountain Wrestling. SMW didn’t start until 1991.
Giant Gonzales was ahead of its time doing a beast titan gimmick
He was one of my favorites back in the day
He was one of the worst, especially the fact that there was so much of his costume to see.
The Great Khali was treated like a clown and he was more serious than Jorge Gonzales
I thought that the "Toxic Turtles" would make this list... Apparently Vince thought that they could ride on the coattails of the Ninja Turtles popularity back in the late 80's... Search for them and chuckle...
I'm not surprised that most of these were during the 90s and I'm surprised how much rip-off gimmicks WCW had from WWE
Seven ripping off Undertaker and displaying himself as a pedophile, one thing Taker never was and never will be.
This was really well done. Remember when Hogan jumped ship and went to Turner they brought out the “Huckster” and “Nacho Man”?
Hogan became heel and stabbed all the fans in the back with the Hollywood Hogan bad guy gimmick
Imagine if there was a top 1000 worst gimmicks of all time. 😳😳😳😳
top 9001.
give WWE a couple more years...
Or a top 10001!
@@UltimateGamerCCYes. They Should’ve Have Hundreds Of Worst Gimmicks.
The “Piggy James” gimmick shouldn’t really count. It was a verbal attack, not a real gimmick Mickey ever actually embraced. Just LeCool “mean-girling” her.
A McCool who really hated those segments and period. She really felt sorry for Mickie, same thing for Layla.
Remain one of the worst angle in WWE history.
So was making fun of Molly Holly's supposed large behind which was hilarious considering that Trish's posterior was bigger than Molly's.
Mickie James is really pretty in some ways. And she has a gorgeous voice singing her country and western music of her own. She has made more of a career of herself than those two plastics Layla and Michelle
Great list, but kind of surprised not to see Eugene on there.
Eugene was great
@@Craig-bz2iuBut he was a babyface (except just before he was fired), who usually dished it out to the bullies.
Plus, Dinsmore was excellent in the role.
Poor Tugboat 😂 Thanks for dredging these up, I missed a few as a kid.
Fandango and loch ness should feature
Thank you for the video. Just a note: Mike Shaw, not Mike Bell.
According to Bruce Pritchard - Brutus Beefcake, as the Run In Man was simply to get him some time back in the ring and get some confidence back after his accident where he basically had his face reconstructed. Wanted to make sure there would be no medical side affects to it.
That's actually kinda cool, I didn't know that.
For a second I thought Rosey was going to be on this list because his face was shown behind the list here at 0:23
I'm grateful for this wrestling content.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.
25:02 that's not even a power ranger that's just a cheap knock off of hayabusa
If Kamala is on this list I strongly disagree.
I feel like quite a few of these *could* have worked if the execution was a little better or the performer had the talent to perform in the ring. Sometimes its how far into a gimmick people go, like the minotaur is obviously terrible, but in essence the same is achieved by Rhyno, just a lot less literally. I liked the look of both the fantasio and knuckleball characters!
Also i dont know why, but every time you said tugboat and we saw him on screen in his red and white striped top it cracked me up 😂
Punk and Festus was gold.
Golden Vampire!
Doink #63??? First of all, why is he even on a 'worst list' in the first place?? And where was The Brooklyn Brawler??
How was Wendy Choo not on this list?
Her official nickname is "The Sleepy Superstar"...
The worst gimmick of all time is just the guy in wrestling gear without character
You brought up a bunch of “tasteless” and “aged poorly” characters but left out Eugene.
None of them are tasteless or anything it's hilarious
Giant Gonzalez would have been better if he had a Feud with someone other than Undertaker. He could not be the next Andre the Giant.
No such thing as age poorly that’s just what soft people say
Eugene gimmick was left because it was successful with wrestling fans who have disabilities
@@fro-zone2k Eugene was a man with learning difficulties and couldn’t wrestle very well at all. That is harsh on the disabled community.
15:35 fun fact: the original KISS Demen was portrayed by Brian Adams
Vampiro in ECW
I absolutely LOVED the Black Scorpion angle when it originally aired.
The Real Double J could have been something. Garth Brooks was a big star at the time and I think that was what they were going with with that gimmick. Having the former roadie revealed as the real singer is something that has been done in movies and tv shows for years. It was also a good way to have Road Dogg show off his singing voice. It made sense at the time, it just didn't work as well as they had hoped. It did lead to him finding his true calling though as he was always feuding with Rockabilly (formerly and latterly Billy Gunn).
Men At Work were great
I had forgotten they did that to the one man gang. I really liked OMG and that change just pissed me off. You had this awesome gimmick and they made him some weird dancer.
Eugene not bein in the top 100 is wild
Maybe cause the gimmick was over with the Ruthless Aggression era audience.
That gimmick was cruel as it mocks people with learning difficulties
@@Craig-bz2iu I wouldn’t say, Nick has said that gimmick was successful with those who have learning disabilities
@@fro-zone2k I suppose it helps because the Rock and Stone Cold stood up for Eugene and they showed sympathy to some special needs people with their face characters
A guy just being reborn as African is so hilariously, offensively bad that it's kinda good. Like how a comedy would parody wrestling. ...But it actually happened in wrestling. Unreal.
Piggy James was an angle, not a gimmick.
Wow, explain the difference.
@@michaelkrolewski7406 Piggy James was a storyline in which two heel wrestlers mocked a face wrestler.
For it to be a gimmick Mickie James would have been walking around in a pig costume oinking at people.
To put it another way: Terry Taylor as the Red Rooster was a gimmick. the nWo dressing up like the Horsemen to mock them (or D-X dressing up like the Nation of Domination, for the same reason) was an angle.
That angle was to do with misogyny in the WWE
It's so ironic that Vince buried DDP like that, when he pretty much has DDP to thank for his all time classic Razor Ramon gimmick.
The siliest one I have ever heard was cheeseburger from Ring of honor wrestling company 🍔
I didn't see the "Toxic Turtles" on your list. Definitely should've been top 10.
You can never forget The Ultimate Solution from the dying days of the Hulk Hogan/Dungeon of Doom rivalry. Also, Oklahoma needed to be top 10 at least.
We all can agree that Glen Jacobs's worst gimmick was Isaac Yankem, DDS.
And Fake Diesel
Blue meanie?? Glad Kevin Owens got a better gimmick a few years later.
Blue Meanie is a cartoon parody of Kevin Owens and a prehistoric counterpart to him
What made the Oklahoma gimmick worse was having Steve Williams involved. He and JR had a great relationship, so it must've hurt Steve to do that for a job. He also had bills to pay.
Ferrara deserved to have been sued, if not beaten, for Oklahoma. Then again, him being involved in wrestling should be punished as well. And Dr. Death should've been embarrassed for going along with it, no matter what they were paying him.
Where's Eugene?
Respect Eugene
No William Regal construction worker? "He's a man, a real man's man..." Terrible gimmick, fun song.
Piggy James, Molly Holly's Back Side and Shelton Benjamin's mother are not gimmicks. They're just really short storylines and angles
Good call
And Molly Holly could kick all the divas butts
Seriously, Becky Lynch as an Irish dancer isn't even the fourth worst gimmick, let alone a top ten worst gimmick. You have gimmicks like Bastion Booger, Saba Simba, Tommy Dreamer as El Diablo in IWCCW, Red Rooster, TL Hopper, Gobbledy Gooker, The Creator (an independent manager), and other much worse gimmicks.
Hey...I may have been a kid, but I liked the Vinnie Vegas gimmick.
The Shockmaster is hilarious. If you listen closely the guy doing the voice over is actually laughing himself before he starts his speech.
Im glad you were specific about which Doink made this list. Matt Borne as Doink was pure gold.
He covered 100 in under 34 minutes. There is no acceptable reason for anyone to have a list of 10-20 of anything run just as long. Kudos to you, sir!
I can't believe Eugene didn't make this list
it was incredibly successful actually, right until the point that the cat was let out of the bag, that Eugene wasnt special. many disabled WWE fans looked up to Eugene.
6:51 the looks on the audience's faces. How did Guerrero get talked into this one?!?
And now I can not stop seeing in my mind Mean Gene doing the do-si-do with Guerrero in a chicken outfit at 7:00