10 Wrestlers With 1 Great And 1 Terrible Gimmick

Everything came together for Kazuchika Okada when he began to use the title of ‘Rainmaker’. Returning to NJPW after some time away, Okada manifested his own reality by adopting the character who brings in the big bucks wherever he goes. In the ensuing years, he captured the IWGP Heavyweight Championship multiple times, drove the company to new heights and did so with a character with a level of pageantry thus far unseen in the promotion.

But Okada’s Rainmaker gimmick has a strange source of inspiration and that is his short stint in TNA.

After a string of Xplosion matches, Okada’s first real story in TNA began when he donned a mask and debuted as “Okato”: a wholesale rip-off of the Green Hornet film that had just been released in theatres and its character ‘Kato’. Okato was aligned with Samoa Joe briefly and the story would lead to Okato finally making his Impact television debut.

Following the end of the feud, Okada went back to using his real surname and making sporadic appearances on Xplosion before leaving at the end of the year. The true loser in all of this is TNA, who wasted an amazing talent in every conceivable way. Whilst the Okato gimmick was awful, fans can thank it for helping Kazuchika realise that he needed to find his own character lest someone force him into a role where he didn’t belong.