10 Talented Wrestlers Let Down By Lame Gimmicks

Pro wrestlers are at the mercy of those employing them, and that can have truly disastrous results if the creative team doesn't pick the right character to fit each performer.

Things work the other way too, naturally; for example, Triple H morphing from the bland Hunter Hearst Helmsley into a crucial part of D-Generation X in 1997 allowed the man to display his strengths rather than be pigeon-holed into a one-note gimmick.

Not everyone has been as fortunate as 'The Game' though, and there are examples of those gimmicks that actually stifled a talented wrestler's career entirely, sometimes even killing any chances they had of making it to the top.

Often, it seems like the creative minds in major companies like WWE and WCW have just thrown things at the nearest wall to see what might stick; that explains why this list includes (amongst other things) pirates, disco dancers, porn stars, professors, burglars and the mentally ill.

Even the most sensitive of subjects are rarely exempt when those writers need a new character...

If Paul Burchill was still wrestling regularly on the UK scene, then the talented big man would surely be one of the top names around; before signing with WWE in 2005, the Englishman was already a standout in the old FWA promotion, and he offered something different to the standard British independent wrestler.

Tall, muscular and handsome, Burchill should have been a revelation to the WWE picture, but he was undermined with a series of uninspiring gimmicks that did nothing to highlight the surprising agility he possessed for a big man.

Cast as a pirate in 2006, Burchill was later shoe-horned awkwardly into an incest angle with his on-screen sister, Katie-Lea Burchill. That is not a joke; the man's WWE career went from Captain Jack Sparrow knock-off to a man sexually attracted to his own flesh and blood.

How anyone expected this to get over boggles the mind, especially considering the praise Burchill received for his stirring performances in England and for Ohio Valley Wrestling (WWE's former developmental league).

Both characters Burchill was handed failed to capitalise on exactly why WWE had been interested in him in the first place.