10 Top Secret Wrestling Gimmicks That Will Blow Your Mind
Know about these WWE gimmicks for Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns and more? Probably not!
Pro wrestling companies burn through a lot of ideas you never even hear about.
Ye olde creative cutting room floor is a busy place. It's littered with enough abandoned schemes to fill books, and some of them are absolutely priceless. For example, did you know that Roman Reigns was pretty much doing his whole "Hey, *insert city*. Acknowledge me!" thing years before he was even called Roman Reigns?
Or, were you aware of Cody Rhodes' bold plan to become Iron Man, and how The Undertaker very nearly ended up with a kayfabe brother and son within just a few years of one another? Those top secret plans join others like Bray Wyatt's short-lived offshoot that isn't 'The Fiend', physical beasts losing all muscle tone and...someone being censored on TV because Vince McMahon thought they were "ugly".
Some of these plans never played out on television at all, but a few did sneak onto developmental programming down in FCW (NXT's predecessor). Then, someone backstage wanted to go in a different direction and Raw/SmackDown audiences were robbed of f'n "Mighty Mouse"!
These ditched WWE characters will blow your mind.
10. Christian Gets Censored For “Being Ugly”
Spare a thought for poor Christian.
Despite being one hell of an in-ring talent and eventually earning World Title status, ol' Christian Cage was never really one of Vince McMahon's favourites. In fact, back in 2005, McMahon openly discussed putting a blue dot over Christian's face whenever he was on TV because he was "too ugly".
No, seriously. Bruce Prichard has spoken about this in the past, and also revealed that Christian was in line to play a parody of The Rock that'd deliberately court heel heat. That Dwayne Johnson knock off would've been preferable, but imagine hearing from your boss that the company needs to censor you 'cause of your looks. Wow.
This didn't make it to TV, thankfully. WWE kept the blue dot at bay, and Christian was allowed to show his features on shows like Raw and SmackDown for a while longer before bolting to TNA. He escaped the "you're too ugly" fate in the end.