10 Best WWE Gimmicks That Were Only Used Once
8. Past-Middle Aged & Crazy
It was vitally important for WWE fans to know that Terry Funk was in his mid-50s in 1998.
For one, he looked even older than that due to a life giving his body to the wrestling business, and also because the company were so obsessed with age as a stick to beat the WCW roster with that they then couldn't push this mad old f*cker without making it clear that his success was on him, not them finding space for it.
Context was all but lost when it came to explaining why (if, at all) age mattered on a wrestling show, but never had it been less needed than when Mae Young started taking sh*tkickings on the reg. This - and christ there really is nothing else like wrestling is there? - made sense. She was in her 70s, could be believably cast as older still, and was willing to take and sell the brutality of flying table spots or chairs and guitars to the head.
Horrifying yet darkly humorous, it's a tricky concept for a cleaner contemporary product to revist. Only Vince McMahon himself would fit the bill (he'll turn 76 in 2021, the age Young was when Bubba Ray Dudley powerbombed her off the stage), and his segments are now reduced to b*llocking his subordinates and negging his son-in-law.