10 Great Wrestlers Who Started Out With Terrible Gimmicks
7. Triple H As Terra Ryzing
Triple H has undergone a plethora of gimmick and character changes in WWE alone, but the company love to brush his early days in WCW under the rug. This is understandable, however: Hunter was never anything more than a bit part player in Ted Turner’s company, and his early failings there remain a lowlight of his long, glittering career.
He signed for WCW in 1994, and made his debut as the villainous Terra Ryzing, because WCW’s creative team were apparently ahead of the curve in terms of corny wordplay (fortunately, Disco Inferno’s “Bill Ding” never came to fruition). Terra was a basic, uninteresting heel who displayed glimpses of the nefarious traits that would later define Triple H’s “Cerebral Assassin” character, but the gimmick never got off the ground.
Hunter was released when his request for an increased push was turned down in January 1995, and he soon found his way to WWE. There, he built-on the blue blood character he’d switch to halfway through his WCW run when it was clear that Terra Ryzing was a bomb, and later, he became D-Generation X’s rambunctious cornerstone. A humbling start for one of WWE’s biggest stars, and one he’d love you to forget about.