10 Wrestlers We Had To Hate Before We Could Love
The characters we thought were clueless, and the wrestlers we thought were talentless.
Think about your favourite wrestler - did they start out this awesome, or have they become so through an artful alteration of gimmick? Perhaps they simply changed their style or became a more well-rounded performer?
It's fair to say that not every wrestling performer lucks into the character that's going to propel them to stardom straight away: in fact, those that have are the exception, not the rule. Glenn Jacobs was notorious for labouring under some of the crappiest gimmicks that ever existed until he was given the Kane character out of nowhere in 1997. Unabomb was just weird, Isaac Yankem (DDS) unintentionally hilarious. Fake Diesel was one of the most poorly conceived gimmicks in history, and The Christmas Creature was, well, it was The Christmas bloody Creature. None of those idiots were ever going to work WrestleMania opposite The Undertaker, were they?
Similarly, not every wrestler starts their career with all the tools needed to deliver at a high level. It's something that can often come in time. Here are ten examples of workers that took their time getting it right, and characters that began life with the worst or most heelish gimmickry imaginable - the wrestlers we had to hate before we could love them...