10 WWE Gimmicks That Worked For One Wrestler (But Not Another)
9. Max Cady From "Cape Fear"
Worked for: Bray Wyatt
Didn't work for: Waylon Mercy
Interestingly enough, it was the second incarnation of this gimmick that ended up being far more successful than the first.
Dan Spivey was a successful tag team wrestler across several different promotions in the '80s and '90s, but his final year of wrestling saw him adopt a Cape Fear-inspired character called Waylon Mercy. While Mercy exhibited characteristic Southern American chivalry outside of the ring, inside of it he was a merciless miscreant.
Mercy's WWF run was markedly short-lived, as he would retire due to injuries just months later. Still, he felt as if there was some untapped potential with the gimmick, so he bequeathed it to the son of his former tag team partner, Mike Rotunda (a.k.a. Irwin R. Schyster), in 2014.
Windham Rotunda, who was floundering in WWE as "Husky Harris" at the time, adopted the name "Bray Wyatt", threw on some white jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and a fedora, picked up some cult followers, and started speaking in a long-winded yet somewhat-poetic manner.
The character change ended up being exactly what Rotunda needed to succeed in WWE, and he has since captured two tag team championships as well as the company's top prize.