10 Awesome Real Wrestler Names That Are Better Than Their Ring Names

1. Richard Blood

Kelly Kelly Barbie Blank
WWE.com

Ricky Steamboat is one of the most beloved professional wrestlers of all-time. It is often said that the vast majority of wrestlers work better as heels than as faces, but Steamboat is one of those who simply don't fit that billing. 'The Dragon' was as babyface as they come, a top tier talent when it came to getting sympathy from a crowd before exploding to life with fiery, passionate comebacks.

Of course, this may never have come to pass if Steamboat had used his real name throughout his career. Steamboat was born Richard Blood, a name he passed on to his retired wrestling son we knew as Richie Steamboat. Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat was pure babyface, but Richard Blood really couldn't be anything other than a dastardly heel.

Performing as he did in the AWA, NWA, WCW and WWF through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Richard Blood (no, please don't make a Dick Blood joke) was no stranger to the crimson stuff, as anyone who battled Ric Flair can testify. How fantastic would it have been for a major heel of the time to take Blood as their surname?

Richard Blood is objectively a cooler name than Ricky Steamboat, but it could only really work as a heel name. Eddie Graham knew this, and it was Graham who gave Blood the name that would make him famous.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.