10 Wrestlers Who Modelled Their Whole Style On Other Wrestlers

4. Bray Wyatt - Waylon Mercy

Waylon Mercy was, almost implacably, both 10 years too early and 10 years too late.

The man behind it, Dan Spivey, was a wreck physically and needed a more character-driven gimmick to keep himself on TV even it meant he'd never be put anywhere near the main event. The character itself was brilliant, but just not the sort of thing that played well in the years prior to the Attitude Era. A decade sooner for his body, or a decade later for the gimmick, and he'd have been a main eventer.

Thus when Husky Harris desperately needed a rebrand, Spivey himself suggested that he took the short-lived character he'd been unable to make work and twist for a new generation. The creepy vibes, the coded promos, the southern drawl, the white trousers / Hawaiian shirt combo, they didn't even try to disguise the surface-level similarities but Wyatt was creating something far deeper.

Despite the mixed bag that was Wyatt's initial run he comfortably succeeded in the gimmick where Spivey failed, even paying direct tribute to him by naming the Firefly Funhouse's Mercy The Buzzard after him.