10 Famous Wrestling Gimmicks That Were Actually Inherited
6. Kane
At 6’8" and 23 years of age, Drew Hankinson had youth and size on his side when he joined WWE in 2006. Unfortunately for Drew, he immediately entered into a doomed role as Kane's double, appearing as what would come to be known as "Imposter Kane".
Dressed in Kane attire circa 1998, Hankinson defeated the real Kane (Glenn Jacobs) at Vengeance 2006; however, the match was so negatively received that the angle was dropped the very next night and never spoken of on TV again. Despite the knee-jerk reaction, the original idea was actually an ingenious way to continue the Kane character without Jacobs, who had been considering retirement.
The story goes that the Imposter Kane was eventually going to be revealed as the real Kane after all, with Glenn Jacobs having allegedly stolen his identity. While the storyline was hardly Tarantino level narrative, it would have served its purpose in getting Jacobs off TV without removing the Kane character altogether.
In the wake of the fiasco, Hankinson went on to become the mentally challenged Festus character on Smackdown before getting a serious upgrade and re-debuting as Luke Gallows of the Straight Edge Society in late 2009.