10 Crazy Wrestling Gimmicks That Should Have Never Worked (But Did)

4. Razor Ramon

There has long been overlap between Hollywood and wrestling. Usually, you have actors appearing in the squared circle, or the occasional sports entertainer dropping the "sports" part for a run in Tinseltown. Then you have those who saw something in a movie, and attempted to emulate it in the ring. Enter Scott Hall. Upon joining the then-WWF, he recalls approaching Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson with an impersonation of Tony Montana from the movie Scarface, claiming he did so as a joke. However, to his surprise, McMahon and Patterson were floored by the impersonation and were fully on-board with the gimmick, while Hall apparently knew better than to question a good thing. As he would later learn, neither Vince nor Pat had ever seen the movie, leaving them to believe that Hall was a "genius" who had come up with the idea on his own. Generally speaking, it's difficult to imagine that doing a movie impersonation would help one get over with a wrestling crowd, but seeing as Hall managed to ride the Razor Ramon character to what was then a record four Intercontinental Championship reigns, it's hard to argue with results...

...though, of course, that doesn't mean it would work for everyone, as "Fake Razor" would later prove. Interestingly enough, when Hall would jump ship to WCW and help found the New World Order as one half of the Outsiders, he dropped the Razor Ramon name and theme, but otherwise retained the gimmick, faux-Cuban accent and all. This didn't please WWE, who in a lawsuit filed against WCW to get them to stop insinuating that the nWo were invading WWE talent, felt that Hall was still infringing on their own intellectual property. Ironic, given that the entire idea arose from impersonating someone else's IP to begin with, which is probably why Hall never stopped. Even years later, it would seem that Vince McMahon doesn't follow the films of popular culture all too closely. In 2006, Paul Burchill took up a pirate gimmick inspired by Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow in the then-red hot Pirates of the Caribbean films, and received positive reactions from the crowd for his efforts. Unfortunately for him (and the WWE Universe), McMahon was reportedly unaware of the popular films and character, and didn't think it would work out as a crowd favorite.