15 MORE Wrestling Gimmicks That Got Weird Rip-Offs
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, unless WWE, AEW and TNA are paying you for it...
Blake Monroe's getting mixed reviews in her WWE/NXT run, as much for the fact that it feels like a lightweight follow-on from her time as Mariah May in AEW.
Her character is understandably similar to the one she portrayed for just under two years on the challenger brand, but she's filled in the gap by borrowing much from Timeless Toni Storm's work against her. It might be nothing more than affectionate tribute, but those standards were so high that she's found herself considered lesser-than as a result. She won't be the first or last, and really how much can ever be truly original anyway? Monroe's borrows are nothing compared to some from yesteryear.
WWE effectively tried to rebuild its tag division not with rip-offs but by cloning a singles wrestler to split one gimmick across two men. Skip introduced a shaven-headed Tom Prichard as his BodyDonnas partner Zip, babyfaced Henry Godwinn brought Phineas along for the ride, Barry Windham and Justin 'Hawk' Bradshaw temporarily revived their flagging fortunes with a New Blackjacks gimmick, and even Al Snow's latest attempt to get over in WWE came via sporting a colourful singlet and tagging with Marty Jannetty as The Rockers were rebooted some four years after their famous disbanding.
It wasn't the first time Marty was being accused of a rehash, though the first attempt went a lot better than the second...
15. The Rock & Roll Express (The Rockers)
Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty were both so athletic, so good looking, and so vital to WWE's mid/late-1980s expansion that there was never a chance they'd be confused for lesser-thans even when positioned right next to the originals.
Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson were era-defining babyfaces in the 1980s, but with WWE's promotional machine and a day-glo update, The Rockers were able to use the template to find a global audience beyond the originals.
Ricky and Robert won countless titles and engaged in fantastic blood feuds - things Shawn and Marty never managed during their 1987-1991 stint with the market leader. But suddenly, those things had never mattered less to a brand new audience. In WWE's land of the giants, The Rockers were something entirely different, and lit up shows with matches so far beyond the quality of most of their contemporaries that they looked as though they'd descended from an alien planet rather than very same territories the Rock & Roll Express had previously owned.
Superbly produced and executed, their Barber Shop split is fondly remembered by wrestling fans of all stripes as one of the greatest in the history of the industry. Just six months earlier, Ricky had turned on Robert in WCW in a story that mostly passed without mention and was undone a year later. Was this evidence that one were always more solid as a unit than the other, or a reality check that the imitators has ultimately out-stripped the originals?