2. Waylon Mercy
WWE.comA full 17 years before Bray Wyatt debuted in FCW, Waylon Mercy debuted in the WWF under a very similar gimmick. Smooth-talking Southern boy who basically transforms once the bell rings to start a match, going from mild-mannered to a vicious psychopath. Mercy and Wyatt are both modeled after Robert De Niro's portrayal of Max Cady in the 1991 movie, Cape Fear. De Niro's Cady was a part of a religious Southern family that played with snakes, allowing themselves to get bit for religious purposes. Cady was muscular, wore colorful shirts, and was covered in tattoos. He doesn't do the terrible things he does because he feels he's evil. He does them, thinking that he is motivated by God to help his victims, and he speaks in tongues. Does that sound familiar? Dan Spivey achieved a small amount of success in America and Japan, but Waylon Mercy could have been his ticket to bigger success. Of course, it wasn't, or he wouldn't be involved in this article. After only a couple months of floundering in the midcard, not making any waves, Spivey retired due to an accumulation of injuries. If we're going to be fair, he was 43 years old when he retired, but he was handed a gimmick that can make stars and turn them into main event players, as Bray Wyatt has proven, and he did nothing with it. He couldn't connect with crowds, and he couldn't really work, so he went nowhere. At least Wyatt has saved the gimmick, and made it his own through some masterful character work in the ring and on the mic.