10 Great Wrestlers Who Started Out With Terrible Gimmicks

Professional wrestling is a strange beast. While the sport's creative teams have come-up with droves of compelling, engaging storylines and characters since the transition towards a more entertainment-focused style, they produce just as many misses as hits. Wrestling worst gimmicks are just as memorable (and sometimes more so) than the sport's best, and saddling performers with terrible gimmicks often sounds their career's death knell.

Rick Bognar's career sank like the Titanic are being cast as WWE's Fake Razor Ramon, and The Shockmaster brought an abrupt end to former WWE Tag Team Champion Typhoon's high-level career. Shane Douglas should have become a megastar after tossing the NWA Championship to the ground in ECW, meanwhile, but his brief run as WWE's Dean Douglas soon put an end to that.

Most wrestlers never get the opportunity to recover from these heat vacuums, and that's a shame. For all the memorable moments that wrestling's creatives have cooked-up over the years, they must take their share of the blame for burying these wrestlers under awful gimmicks.

Some wrestlers, however, are just too good to be denied. Performers overcoming such characters with their reputation in-tact is increasingly rare, but some of wrestling's biggest stars started life with ridiculous, lower-card gimmicks. They persevered, found their footing, and either made the gimmick their own, or transitioned towards something entirely more successful.

Here are 10 great wrestlers who started with terrible gimmicks.

Dolph Ziggler’s had an up and down WWE career, but if his run were to end tomorrow, he’d be held in high regard by most of WWE’s fans. Often under-utilized, Ziggler has established himself as a tremendous athlete and one of WWE’s more exciting in-ring competitors. He’s an incredibly easy character to get behind, and while more comfortable as a heel, his recent babyface resurrection has made him one of WWE’s most popular stars.

It’s hard to forget his origins, however, particularly in his ongoing feud with The Miz. Recent months have seen the Intercontinental Champion recruit Kenny and Mikey as two ghosts from Ziggler’s past, and while Ziggler initially fended them off with ease, they played a big role in his IC Title loss a few weeks ago.

The Spirit Squad were an obnoxious group of cheerleaders that had fans reaching for the remote every time they were onscreen. Loud, brash, and immensely annoying, they split-up in 2006 after losing a five-on-three handicap match to Triple H, Ric Flair, and Shawn Michaels. The Squad scattered to all corners of the wrestling universe shortly after, with only Ziggler (or Nicky, as he was originally known) enjoying any kind of longevity in WWE.