10 Wrestling Gimmicks That Were NOTHING Like The Wrestlers Who Portrayed Them
Personality Crisis.
Stick a camera in the face of a WWE Superstar during talking head duties for a DVD documentary and they'll fart out the same platitudes every time. Amongst a "that's why he's one of the greatest of all time" for the mushy closing montage or the "nobody knew if he'd be the same after the injury" soundbite to build up to a heroic return, everybody from Steve Lombardi to Stephanie McMahon will unleash the company-mandated favourite.
"It was just who he was for real, but with the volume turned up".
It's odd that the company would champion such a philosophy so frequently. It undermines Vince McMahon as the all-conquering star-maker if he can take a performer and tell them just to ramp up their own personality. It undermines Vince McMahon the man-manager for insisting so many of his former charges portray something so different when the 'up to 11' formula is apparently so successful. Most of all, it undermines Vince McMahon the boss for not realising he's been undermined in his own productions.
It's obviously not as cut and dry as the squawking heads would have viewers believe, but out-there personas have had mixed blessings over the years. It takes a good performer to get any gimmick over. It takes a great one to thrive with a mismatched one.
10. Papa Shango
Charles Wright was one of the few performers to be given a persona almost perfectly in sync with the man he was in 'real' life - he just had to pretend to practice voodoo and mixed martial arts first.
Long before he cavorted with local pole dancers in preparation for owning his own gentleman's club in Las Vegas, Wright donned very early-1990s clobber as Papa Shango, a cartoonish force with an 'Ultimate' obsession.
Much-maligned due to some of the humorous-in-hindsight segments with the Ultimate Warrior following his 1992 return, Shango was himself cursed once their feud climaxed later that year. His voodoo was only powerful until it wasn't, with relentless losses to both the Warrior and WWE Champion Bret Hart signposting him as little more than a bothersome midcarder despite making his pay-per-view debut during the main event of that year's WrestleMania.
Wright nonetheless portrayed the character with convincing aplomb, committing to the opportunity with far more vim and vigour than he could muster as a hybrid fighter and/or Nation Of Domination also-ran in the subsequent years.