10 Wrestlers Who Ruined Gimmick Matches For Everybody Else
"As God as my witness, he is broken in half!"
So often in the world of professional wrestling, a unique gimmick or stipulation is placed on a match in order to give it that little something extra or to put a definitive end to an intense or long-standing rivalry. Or, in recent years, simply because it’s the time of the year that there’s a PPV titled Elimination Chamber or TLC.
Still, the point is that a gimmick match is meant to be special and offer wrestling fans something different. For the most part, that has been the case over the decades, yet there are those times where certain gimmick matches have had a negative effect on that particular match type.
The aim here is to explore the very notion of when a once-great gimmick concept hit the point of no return where that stipulation or match type could never be looked at in the same way again. Sometimes that may be down to jumping the proverbial shark, other times that might be from somebody doing something that can’t be topped, on occasion it might be down to bonkers booking, and other times it might be down to sheer in-ring insanity.
With that in mind, here are ten wrestlers who unwittingly ruined gimmick matches for anybody else who was tasked with having to follow in their footsteps.
10. Enzo Amore - Shark Cage Match
Over the years, the gimmick of suspending somebody above the ring in a shark cage has delivered some fantastic drama for wrestling fans.
To name a few, Jim Cornette, Paul Heyman, J.J. Dillon, Paul Bearer, Paul Ellering, and Jimmy Hart are just some of the legendary managers to find themselves locked above the ring in a shark cage. And then, it was Enzo Amore’s turn.
At SummerSlam 2017, following the break-up of Enzo and Big Cass, Big Show was standing up for Smacktalker Skywalker by battling the 7ft-tall Cass. Hanging above the ring, of course, was The Realist Guy in the Room.
The in-ring action was so-so at best, but it was the antics of Amore that had fans groaning as he stripped down to his underwear and greased himself up so that he could slip out of the cage.
Stripped down to his underwear? Greased himself up? Yeah, that’s pretty much all you need to hear to justify how awful this whole situation was as Enzo Amore took a giant dump all over the gimmick of the shark cage and made this once-serious stipulation a complete joke.