10 Wrestlers Who Visibly Hated Their Own Gimmicks
That's kanji for "buried" on Tensai's big terrified face.
The modern WWE performer probably enters the flagship arena with a certain, relative confidence. The days of complete repackages are over, for now.
You're probably going to be the same person you were in NXT. Well, only without a long-term character arc, or the creative freedom to do more than endure interminable chinlocks, or a fandom given a reason to give a sh*t about you, or the opportunity to actually get over on a major show presented in front of an awake and alert audience. You might become the most parodic version of yourself, defined entirely by one characteristic. Emma became Pointy Dancing Hands, Tye Dillinger became simply Pointy Hands, and virtually everybody else became merely good little hands in the Lenny from Of Mice and Men hands of Vince McMahon.
But the worst thing that can happen to you - beyond entering a bottleneck of 50/50 booking, or simply not appearing much at all, like SAnitY, or being drafted to Main Event - is a simple name change. Yes, you might lose your first name. You might become a meme. People might never take you seriously ever again.
Still, Vince McMahon probably won't turn you into a chicken man.
Probably.
10. The Red Rooster
"I just plain didn't get it," remarked the Red Rooster in a shoot interview years later.
Whether dumbfounded or pissed off or both, Terry Taylor's appearances as the Red Rooster were notable for his sheer, wide-eyed discomfort. Looking almost captive, Terry seemed to send coded messages using only his eyes. Is it just me? he said. I'm sort of in the bubble up here: is the UWF still f*cked, or can I go back?
It was still f*cked, Terry, and so were you.
The gimmick - to the uninitiated, an anthropomorphic rooster with a red mohawk and a predilection to caw throughout tragically optimistic promos aimed at his 'Rooster Boosters' - was conceived as a surgical removal of Taylor's apparent skyscraper ego. In execution, it was as successful as WrestleMania III. Taylor stumbled through his hyper-earnest promos. Perhaps there were layers to this sh*t we didn't get. Perhaps Taylor was acting scared because he was a chicken. Or perhaps he was trapped in an actual existential nightmare.
Taylor probably should have detected a hint of cynicism, even if this predated WWE's rampant culture of toxicity years later. Terry, bubby, they didn't just ask you to cluck through a f*cking airport - they made you wake up to catch the earliest flight!