10 Rip Off Wrestling Gimmicks (That Messed Up What They Copied)

5. Waylon Mercy

Ultimate Warrior Renegade
Universal/WWE

It doesn't get the same sort of love that other Robert De Niro movies do but sleep on 'Cape Fear' (1991) at your peril. De Niro plays Max Cady, a violent criminal out for revenge on the defence lawyer that he believed was incompetent, and the whole thing unravels in a cascade of sinister anger and psychological terror. It is a seriously good film, albeit a slightly terrifying one, with De Niro shining as the unhinged and vengeful Cady.

Often seen as some sort of ideological ancestor of Bray Wyatt, Waylon Mercy was a mid-'90s WWF gimmick played by Dan Spivey that was based on De Niro's star turn, albeit minus the nuance and restraint needed for such a sinister figure to jump out the screen. Nuance and Cape Fear in the same thought? Absolutely. Max Cady oozed disturbing nihilism. Waylon Mercy oozed 'man trying to play someone oozing disturbing nihilism'.

It didn't help that the gimmick struggled to translate to anything meaningful in the ring. Wrestling history is littered with characters that were gentlemen to begin with only to turn violent once the bell rang, and they have rarely worked well. Mercy's attempts to bring Max Cady into the WWE failed because it was too focused on the surface-level characteristics of the gimmick. Bray Wyatt would have much more success (yes, seriously) by making the gimmick altogether more 'professional wrestling', eschewing the grey areas in favour of giving Jake Roberts-style promos and having a big beard.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.