10 WWE Sidekicks Who Were A Total Liability
2. Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake
It's difficult to think of many wrestlers from the 1980s that were quite as useless as Brutus The Barber Beefcake. Let's start with the basics - Ed Leslie was a truly dreadful wrestler with a puffy, steroid-addled physique and a proper old school wrestlers mullet. Business in the front, party in the back indeed.
The Barber's singles run in the WWF between 1984 and 1990 and again in 1993 was so utterly forgettable that, in an odd application of quantum physics, it may not actually exist. If a terrible wrestler with a dreadful lower card gimmick gets pinned on a house show and no ones watching, does it actually happen?
But Leslie was Hulk Hogan's best friend, having ridden his coattails to the WWF, and so received an opportunity he wouldn't have otherwise upon return from a nasty injury in 1993. The Mega-Maniacs were born.
Quite why all of Hogan's tag teams have the word mega in them is beyond us unless he's overcompensating for something Beefcake took to wearing the Hulkster's colours and a facemask to prevent their heel opponents Money Inc. from molesting his moneymaker, but there was no future in the gimmick.
Leslie had no heat except what Hogan lent him by association, and he had no talent to impress audiences with, or charisma to charm them. Their opponents were master heatseeking heels: The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase, Mike I.R.S. Rotunda and veteran heel manager Jimmy Hart. Hogan was forced to carry Beefcake through the matches and their promotion.
When Hogan left the WWF in mid-1993, the Barber wasn't far behind him: Leslie followed him to WCW, where he proceeded to stink out the joint all over again.