10 WWE Gimmicks Wrestlers Refused

Throughout the history of the wrestling business, a gimmick can make or break a career.

When looking back across the decades, there are those times when a gimmick and a wrestler were made for each other - Curt Hennig as Mr. Perfect, Ted DiBiase as the Million Dollar Man, and obviously Barry Darsow as Repo Man as three prime examples - while there are also those gimmicks that completely sank a superstar's career.

Likewise, there are those great near misses. Imagine if Mark Calaway's Survivor Series '90 debut came as the Eggman instead of The Undertaker? Scarily, that was close to actually happening. Whereas fate shined on the Deadman on that fateful November night, there are those other times when a wrestler had a near-miss thanks to their own refusal to take on a certain persona - rather than simply relying on WWE creative to do good by them.

Whether these wrestlers could've turned these gimmicks into wrestling gold, we'll sadly never know - the Magic 8-Ball suggests not - but here are ten WWE gimmicks that some pretty major names outright refused to take on.

One of the more famous gimmick refusals was Bret Hart shooting down the idea of making him 'Cowboy' Bret Hart.

The Hitman has discussed this at several points over the years, and he even went into detail in his 2009 book, My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling. As Bret explains, this idea was put to him upon him first landing in the World Wrestling Federation back in 1984.

Not only did Vince McMahon want to give Hart the 'Cowboy' moniker, McMahon also envisioned the Excellence of Execution riding to the ring on horseback, complete with full cowboy getup and turning the stereotypical cowboy tendencies up to 11 for the gimmick. In Hart's eyes, with his Calgary, Alberta background, if you're going to pretend to be a cowboy then you had to be a real cowboy - and he was not a cowboy.

As has so often been said about Vince McMahon, if you're against one of his ideas then you best have an alternative suggestion up your sleeve. For Bret, this alternative idea was to pair him up with the recently arrived Jim Neidhart and have Jimmy Hart manage the duo as the Hart Foundation.

Vince obviously agreed to Hart's counteroffer, although Bret did end up working a handful of live events as 'Cowboy' Bret Hart first. And while the Hitman thankfully got his way here, he would later go on to portray a cowboy in the shape of Luther Root in the Lonesome Dove series in 1994.