10 Unexpected Origins Of Wrestling Characters
7. Diesel Becomes Significantly Less Cool After Reading This
Diesel was that rarest of things: a cool professional wrestling character in the lame tundra that was pre-1996/7 WWF.
He didn't beg for your support, quite the opposite: fans were drawn to him because he looked like a star, carried himself as a star, and dressed in almost direct contrast to the Day-Glo dorks who smiled so much it's a wonder the wind didn't permanently change their expression. Diesel was a monster in shades who only had to menacingly crack his knuckles to get over, and his stuff looked like death, not that he needed to do too much of it.
His booking was tremendous, even though it wasn't rewarded by any impressive financial gains - so much so that Vince McMahon coped it verbatim when presenting Roman Reigns as a prospective main event-level force. And, because it's Vince, he made the exact same mistake: he made both Diesel and Roman smile like sh*theads the second he started building around them.
Cool as Diesel was, he becomes significantly less cool when you learn that Shane McMahon, young, hip son of the boss, purportedly said "That guy's diesel", which was apparently a fashionable way of saying "cool", and that's where he got his name.
As if 1995 needed to be any worse in retrospect.