10 Worst Ring Names In Wrestling History

Choosing a wrestling name must be the simplest part of a job that is quite literally agonising in its difficulty.

A wrestler can be anything, really. Brash. Intimidating. Plucky. Even intentionally boring. There's considerable scope to pick a name befitting any manner of character. If they're sent into battle by the gods, Warrior is a good shout. If their repertoire is particularly explosive, Nitro seems appropriate.

They more or less pick themselves in many cases.

You'd think so, anyway. There are certain names in wrestling, an industry in which first impressions count for so much, which are just bafflingly bad. Why is it that some wrestlers, who've actually trained in these dark and sadistic arts, are less qualified to choose a ring name than any old fan in Create A Wrestler mode?

If they were that desperate, they could've just used their own. Then again, that would mean the wrestlers could actually make money elsewhere from their own likeness - and certain companies at one point just couldn't have that.

Elsewhere, these are cases of 'say what you see' (out of your massively racist eyes)...

Cobana's run in WWE was as uneventful as it was brief. Like Kassius Ohno and Braden Walker before him, his name change was the first of many ignominies he was subjected to.

'Scotty' isn't too bad. Cobana is a breezy guy, and Scotty is appropriately carefree, but Goldman is such an eye-roller of a second name. It's as if his entire personality was distilled into two components. The lack of forethought isn't surprising given that he was reportedly designated with the moniker just an hour before his debut match.

They might as well have called him 'Chipper Jew'.

Creative evidently had nothing for Cobana, who enterprisingly used his frustrating experience to create a hilarious series of web shorts, 'Creative Has Nothing For You', which could be described as cleverly absurd looks at the witless WWE creative process - if they weren't so scarily accurate.

Thankfully, WWE have relented on their mandatory name change policy, but it's sobering to think of just how many talents who could have gone onto better things had they not been hamstrung by WWE's autocratic and counterproductive philosophy.