10 WWE Superstar Gimmicks That Nearly Turned Out So Differently

5. Shawn Michaels

The Heartbreak Kid gimmick is one that jump-started Shawn Michaels€™ singles career and helped mold the character that would become so closely associated with professional wrestling in the 1990s. Without it, there is no telling how successful Michaels would have been on his own as fans got a great deal of pleasure in despising the Sexy Boy and, thus, the character was much hotter and more effective than some of the other duds that McMahon produced at the time. Michaels, to his credit, was outstanding in the role. He completely immersed himself in the gimmick, even if he did not necessarily believe himself to be all that sexy, as he revealed in his 2006 autobiography Heartbreak and Triumph: The Shawn Michaels Story. In the process, he helped the character stick despite some truly awful attire. If the rocket scientists behind some of the early artwork for the character would have had their choice, though, the Heartbreak Kid would have looked more like someone out of the leather bar scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 than a future WWE champion.

Leather was the name of the game as Michaels closely resembled a pretty boy biker than anyone that could ever have been taken seriously as a future champion. €œLeather doesn€™t mean biker,€ you say? How about the fact that, painted on the back of his jacket was €œbiker?€ Michaels may not consider himself a sexy boy or the Heartbreak Kid but he most certainly does not fit the intimidating biker mold. And while he may not have gone all-in with the biker gimmick, fans got a brief hint of it during the Barber Shop segment in which he turned on partner Marty Jannetty and threw him through the glass window.