10 Strangest WWE Re-packagings Ever

4. Paul Burchill Becomes A Pirate

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WWE.com

Paul Burchill was one of many missed opportunities in WWE in the mid 2000s. Burchill made his WWE debut in 2005 by aligning with countryman William Regal, because in professional wrestling all British people get along. Regal became something of a mentor to Burchill, and the two received a couple of shots at the WWE Tag Team Championships in the process. The team eventually split fairly amicably.

I used the qualifier 'amicably' there because just a week after going their separate ways Burchill returned as Pirate. Yes, this was Pirates of the Caribbean time, and it was revealed that Burchill's ancestry traced back to Blackbeard himself!

Regal wasn't best pleased and the two had a match, Burchill winning via his impressive C-4 (backflip uranage) finisher. Burchill would elaborately enter the arena by swinging in on a rope, because that's what pirates do.

The gimmick came to an abrupt end when Burchill was decimated by Mark Henry. Things would get worse a few years later for Paul as he returned to TV with Katie Lea as his on-screen sister. That seems harmless enough, so it's best we forget the whole 'implied incest' thing.

This run is memorable only for him hitting a curb stomp on Brian Kendrick that stunned the RAW crowd into silence.

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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.