10 Wrestlers Who Could Have Been Main Eventers With Better Gimmicks

1. Ron Simmons

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WWE.com

In 1992, Ron Simmons pulled off one of the greatest upsets in wrestling history when he defeated Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. He became the first African-American world champion of a major U.S. promotion and a wrestling legend.

When he jumped to WWE just a few years later, though, the company decided to squander his legacy in favor of giving him a bizarre gladiator gimmick. That was soon dropped in favorite of the Nation of Domination - a stable with a gimmick inspired by the Nation of Islam that allowed WWE to create offensive storylines about race.

After that stable broke up, he was placed into a tag team with Bradshaw. Originally called The Acolytes and given an occult gimmick, they morphed into the APA, a muscle-for-hire outlet that actually became quite popular.

All in all, the different characters Simmons played in WWE varied in terms of good taste and success, but the simplest answer would have been the best - simply let the former world champion keep working as a heroic babyface. Instead, Simmons's best talents were wasted.

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Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried. *Best Crowd of the Year, 2013