10 Biggest Career Transformations In WWE History

Some wrestlers change very little over the course of their careers, while others undergo radical transformations. Those who change are usually the smartest, as they know how to gauge changing fan reactions and adapt their presentation accordingly; while those who stay the same tend to be either too blind to see fans getting bored with repetition, or in too comfortable a position to consider doing something else.

Then, there are unexpected changes; transformations that, when you look back on a wrestler’s debut, it amazes you just how much said wrestler changed from their debut. Sometimes a wrestler starts out incredibly popular but fans get bored of them quickly, and so they change their gimmick to something radically different. In other cases, a wrestler starts their career doing very little actual wrestling, and by the end of their career they’re stealing the show. Then there are those Superstars whose careers and histories are forever tarnished by something they did outside of the ring, never to be seen in the same light again.

The following ten WWE Superstars have all had varying levels of success while working for Vince McMahon, with one major exception: all of them have undergone significant transformations during their WWE careers. Whether it was something related to their in-ring abilities, their gimmicks, their reputations or their status on the card, looking back at each of these wrestlers’ debuts, you’d never think they’d transform in the ways that they did.

When ‘Big Show’ Paul Wight debuted with WWE, it looked like he was going to be another incarnation of Andre the Giant: a slow-moving behemoth of a human being whose unique size would make him a draw regardless of his wrestling abilities.

However, Vince didn’t portray him as an intimidating, unstoppable force for long. While he was presented this way during the first few years of his career, and then during random periods later on, it wasn’t long before Mr. McMahon was convinced to turn Big Show into a big buffoon.

Before he knew it, Show became a sort of comedy character who did impressions of people and was generally the butt of fat jokes (example: Goldust walking in on a sleeping Big Show, who mutters ‘cheeseburger’ in his sleep).

This stemmed from Show’s own alleged laziness, and instead of being an athletic big man like his mentor the Undertaker, Show’s reputation as an intimidating force soon disappeared.

But the nadir of his booking came more recently, as Show has taken on the persona of a ‘gentle giant’, who cries when those around him suffer pain. Worse yet, he tends to lose much more often than he should, given his stature and longevity with WWE. 

Simply put, Show now looks like an even bigger buffoon who’s more likely to start crying than Chokeslamming his opponents like he should be.