10 Great Wrestlers Who Started Out With Terrible Gimmicks
9. JBL As Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw
JBL was an Attitude Era midcard highlight as one half of the Acolytes Protection Agency. He and Faarooq amassed three reigns as WWE Tag Team Champions, and their mercenary personas were hugely popular with the fans.
The APA provided a great platform for Bradshaw’s later success as JBL, but he had to endure some pretty atrocious creative direction early in his WWE. A huge Stan Hansen fan throughout his professional career, JBL debuted in 1996 as Justin “Hawk” Bradshaw, and the parallels between him and Hansen were too stark to be coincidental.
“Hawk” was a big, burly Lariat-throwing Texan who played a rowdy cowboy gimmick than toned down Hansen’s craziness, but presented Bradshaw in a similar light. Managed by Uncle Zebekiah (otherwise known as Zeb Colter), Hawk used a branding iron to mark his defeated opponents with “JB” with ink, though the character lasted just eight months, with the highlight being a brief feud with Savio Vega.
Bradshaw was later paired with his storyline cousin Barry Windham with yet another tribute gimmick, but The New Blackjacks found little traction in the tag division. Despite all he’s accomplish since, Bradshaw’s first few WWE years couldn’t have gone much worse short of being fired.