10 Wrestlers WWE Wished They’d Debuted Differently
9. Thurman ‘Sparky’ Plugg
In 1994, at the height of the New Generation era of the WWF/E, the cheesy occupational gimmick was still going strong. For Vince McMahon, anyway - the fans had tired of the wrestling plumber, the wrestling taxman and the wrestling shoe salesman a long, long time before.
Robert Howard came to the WWF as a journeyman wrestler with a no-nonsense attitude. Faced with this menacing former bouncer and bar fighter - a man built like a heavyweight boxer who once legitimately wrestled a bear - McMahon decided to award him the gimmick of happy-go-lucky NASCAR racing driver Thurman ‘Sparky’ Plugg, slapping hands and kissing babies as he bounced his way to the ring in a cascade of neon and primary colours.
It should have been obvious to anyone that ‘Sparky’ Plugg wasn’t going to give WWF fans the best of Bob. Although the name soon changed to ‘Sparkplug’ Bob Holly, it would take four years and an uncompromising performance in the car crash Brawl For All shoot tournament for ‘Hardcore’ Holly to finally show his face on television.
Later settling into his role of midcard bruiser, you can perhaps argue that the WWF/E never really used Holly to his best advantage. However, they had the opportunity in the pre-Attitude Era landscape to showcase a genuine badass - to let Bob Holly be Bob Holly in 1994, not 1998.
Sadly, that’s an opportunity the WWF passed on in favour of trotting out yet another generic whitebread babyface character...