8 Wrestling Gimmicks That Were Much Darker Outside WWE
From gush-hackers to Bushwhackers.
The Ringmaster. Rocky Maivia. Cowboy Bret Hart. Shorty G. Mason the Mutilator. DDP the stalker. The Viking Raiders. Mighty Mouse. Barry Windham the Stalker. Stardust. Dean Douglas. Deacon Batista.
These are just a handful of the terrible ideas Vince McMahon came up with - and in many cases, stuck with - to either promote new or repackage existing talent. It's fair to say the man has quite the knack for turning the proverbial chicken salad into a sack of chicken sh*t, until, as ever, fate intervenes on his behalf (or quits and forms AEW).
Stardust - Cody Rhodes to everybody besides WWE's spiteful alumni page - is probably the best current example of a wrestler who people could only take seriously once he shed McMahon's horrific creative. But what if he'd stuck with it? Could he have made Stardust legitimate on the indies? Now that would have been a challenge.
And not one without precedent. Several stars, still looking to trade on a name that got them famous, managed to refine the caricature handed to them in Titan Towers into something much more compelling beyond those boundaries. Some did it in advance - only to see all that hard work go to waste once they stepped into Vince's office...
8. Haku
Haku was one frightening customer during his time in WWE, a man who, despite wearing no shoes, could easily kick your face in, if not clean bite it off. But, radge though he undoubtedly was, his character never extended to the occult. He was quite content to scare people away with the power of his walnut-hard fists, without any need for the power of the pentagram.
As Colonel Robert Parker's hired muscle in WCW, things broadly remained the same, though he was re-christened Meng and now wore pinstripe suits and cool shades.
That all changed when Meng fell in with the Satanic Kevin Sullivan's Dungeon of Doom lot. The Pacific Islander was no longer just the world's toughest bouncer, but a bona fide killer who'd apparently dispatched enemies on behalf of the Emperor of Japan with his Tongan Death Grip. Perhaps the newly evil Meng's darkest moment came when he was involved in that triple-cage Doomsday Match at Uncensored '96 - a crime against humanity if ever there was one.