10 Great Wrestlers Who Started Out With Terrible Gimmicks
8. Umaga As 3-Minute Warning's Jamal
Umaga is often forgotten about when considering wrestler’s greatest monster characters, but he was a violent menace on WWE’s upper-midcard until John Cena buried him six feet deep. Umaga’s savage gimmick, light-footedness, and brutal moveset made him a highly-effective heel, and with better direction, he could easily have become his generation’s Kamala.
Umaga’s WWE career ended on a sour note (he was dismissed after a second Wellness Policy violation in 2009), but he didn’t get off to the best of starts either. Though he re-debuted as Umaga in 2006, his initial 2002-03 run saw him comprise one half of 3-Minute Warning, General Manager Eric Bischoff’s hired guns.
3-Minute Warning were a decent pair of workers, but the gimmick stunk. Wrestling as Jamal, Umaga and Rosey were a pair of bruising Samoan gangsters who destroyed everyone in Bischoff’s path, from D-Lo Brown to Mae Young, and bizarrely found themselves paired with Rico later in their run.
Things didn’t last, though. Umaga was fired for getting involved in a bar fight, and shuffled off to Japan for a few middling years with AJPW. His eventual return brought great success, and Umaga went almost a full year without being pinned or submitted, but Rosey and Jamal jumped the shark the minute they started putting their hands on elderly women.