10 Wrestlers Lumbered With Dead On Arrival Gimmicks
4. The Funkasaurus
Brodus Clay devised the Hall of Pain gimmick that was eventually handed to Mark Henry.
The long term arc would have given Clay a storyline reason to lock horns with virtually anybody on the roster - local enhancement talents, undercarders, midcarders and, eventually, headline acts. It was a barnstormer of an idea as marketable as it was ripe with narrative opportunity, a sort of proto-Braun Strowman-needs-competition trajectory. There was also vast Hall of Fame crossover potential heading into WrestleMania season. If Clay had denounced the original Hall and ran through that given year's inductees, WWE could have also spun a Legend Killer retread, leading to a marquee 'Mania bout pitting Clay opposite an able-bodied vet to cement him in the eyes of the casual audience.
Instead, WWE pulled an initially amusing bait and switch and debuted Clay as the Funkasaurus - a dancing big man who could barely dance. His reappearance on the January 9, 2012 RAW was something of a left field hit. Clay showed bags of personality when he shut down an audience heckle with a camp "My bad!".
His momentum was halted when, after weeks upon weeks of teases and presumed backstage planning, it became apparent that Clay couldn't dance. He was removed from television for a couple of months before returning to the grandest stage of them all.
At WrestleMania XXVIII, Clay danced with his "momma" - a young woman with a bean bag shoved up her backside in a dubious spot of racial profiling, popping nobody but Vince McMahon and his legendarily puerile sense of humour.