10 Wrestlers You Will Never See In WWE Hall Of Fame
4. Baron Von Raschke
Baron Von Raschke's omission from the WWE Hall of Fame is straightforward: he worked a Nazi gimmick.
Yes, it was just a character - and an effective one - but it's impossible to do the guy's career justice without the goose-stepping and the swastikas that characterised him at his '70s peak. What would WWE do, exactly? Fill his retrospective with clips from the Baron's time as a bit-parter in Paul Jones' Army in '86 or his brief run managing The Powers of Pain in Stamford two years later? No, they'd have to let the fascism loose - and there's no way they want that association.
The man behind the Baron, James Donald Raschke, was an amateur wrestler and served in the US Army before taking on the German character to draw heat in the territory era. It worked. He terrorised babyfaces and audiences alike, taking a gimmick originated by Karl Von Hess and Hans Schmidt to new prominence. In later years Von Raschke would ease off on his more overt motifs as societal standards changed, though he was a reviled figure for years, particularly in the AWA, where the bulk of his success came.