10 Dumbest Wrestling Gimmicks Of All Time

By Chris Quicksilver /

7. Phantasio

Looking something like a cross between Papa Shango and a mentally defective mime artist, Phantasio began and ended his WWF career on the same night... The night in question was July 16th 1995, the event was a Superstars taping at which Phantasio worked a match against jobber Tony DeVito (no relation to Danny, but with about as much athletic prowess). Phantasio walked out holding a flaming stick and paused as if he was going to breathe fire with it, Ricky Steamboat style. Instead, he simply snuffed the fire out and smugly used the stick as a walking cane. Apparently, this was meant to inspire awe and wonder in the audience, but this was 1995, the kids had already seen fire breathing wrestlers (even wrestling dentists). Besides, nobody wanted to see a trained fire marshal stepping into the ring... To make matters even worse, it soon became obvious that Phantasio lacked any actual magic ability of any kind. In fact, by all accounts, this was a dude that would struggle to pull off a basic card trick. All of his spots were very obviously gimmicked, including his throwing party streamers in the air for no reason whatsoever, as well as his €˜deadly€™ finisher which involved reaching into his opponent€™s tights (ew) and removing their underwear.At the culmination of an uneventful match, Phantasio robbed referee Earl Hebner€™s (striped) boxers and then handed them back to him, before vanishing forever...Thankfully. As a disturbing post-script to this tale of shat-tacular wrestlers (and the writers who love them), an irate Tony DeVito attempted to prove to Earl Hebner that Phantasio had cheated by pulling his singlet open and showing poor old Earl that he was not, in fact, wearing any underwear. ...Even Mideon would have had issues with that.