10 Ridiculous Wrestling Gimmicks Which Are Actually TRUE
Jimmy Hart versions of themselves.
Did you know professional wrestling is fake? It has been said, and continues to be said, mostly in the intros to national newspaper puff-pieces begrudgingly ground out by put-upon reporters on assignment, as if they are revealing some earth-shattering scoop.
OK, yes: we know: it's not all fake. The bumps are real, the risks are real, and perhaps crucially, the pathos - although technically artificial - is real. But for the most part, wrestling really is as phony as hot dog meat. And, when we were once expected to buy into characters as outlandish as voodoo practitioners, evil employees of the Inland Revenue Service (is there another kind?) and anything Ed Leslie was doing, more often than not it was more fun when we didn't know how said sausage 'meat' was made.
Sometimes though, the sausage is made from actual, er, sausage. Despite all logical assumptions to the contrary, a number of wrestling's most ridiculous characters are, unlike this lot, ground from 100% reality. Did you know, for example, that Brock Lesnar was really an MMA fighter? And that Bret Hart, who played the best professional wrestler of all time, was in fact the best professional wrestler of all time?
You probably did. But perhaps you didn't realise these silly gimmicks were actually nothing but.
10. Thurman 'Sparky' Plugg
Bob Holly was a barroom boxer tougher than mutton - you'd have to be to pull off that bleached-blonde look - so obviously, WWE's instinct, when the Smoky Mountain alum re-joined the company outside a jobbing capacity in 1994, was to put him in a race car and call him Thurman 'Sparky' Plugg.
When Holly received paperwork from Titan Towers bearing the above appellation, he was somewhat taken aback, presuming it to be some elaborate rib on the part of old friend Paul Bearer. Nope: Vince wanted Bob to buckle up, owing to the newcomer's past life driving cars competitively.
The surly Californian knew full well that nice guys called Sparky finish last, and unsurprisingly, he asked if he could at least change his name to something a little less terrible. It wasn't all bad though: McMahon gifted Holly with a customised car to go with the gig. Just a shame the idea didn't have much gas in its tank.