10 Wrestlers Who Didn't Take Their Gimmicks Seriously Enough
Must try harder.
Two things are generally required for a great performance in the wrestling ring, the first and most obvious of them being talent. If you can't fly around the ring and cut a convincing promo (or at least be able to do one of the two), then you're probably going to struggle to get anyone on your side.
But there's another, perhaps equally important component that every wrestler needs: commitment. For fans who have parted with their hard-earned cash to attend a show, not showing the requisite levels of enthusiasm for the opportunity to entertain them is perhaps the cardinal sin, and those behind the curtain appear to take much the same view.
While most of those who have worked for the very biggest wrestling promotions have taken this very sage advice on board from the get-go, some of them had to first undergo a bit of a learning curve. In the process, these guys and gals have allowed perfectly good (and sometimes perfectly rubbish) gimmicks to go to waste through their own indifference.
The upshot, however, is that they have given us one or two laughs along the way.
10. Robbie McAllister
Here's how not seriously Robbie McAllister took his gimmick (that of an uber-patriotic Scottish Highlander): he once turned up in the Impact Zone, in plain clothes, to watch a TNA show.
In his defence, it's not like wrestlers can reasonably be expected to stay in costume 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But you've got to at least try and avoid being caught on camera in the audience of your promotion's biggest rivals during your down-time.
The worst part is that this all happened right on the eve of WrestleMania XXIV, an infraction for which McAllister was supposedly robbed of his bonus money and squashed by a particularly stiff JBL a couple of weeks later on Raw.
Not only did it kill the illusion of him actually being a dyed-in-the-wool kilt-wearer (some of us still believed it at the time), it effectively cost him his job with WWE as well. Publicly embarrassing Vince McMahon is always going to be tough to come back from.