12 Wrestlers Who Looked COMPLETELY Out Of Place In Other Promotions
5. Bob Backlund In The WWF
This is a total outlier, because Bob Backlund had been WWF long before it was cool.
He'd been WWF Champ across years in the 1980s, then stepped aside for The Iron Sheik so Hulkamania could be born by beating the heel for the top prize in '84. Then, for whatever reason, Vince McMahon decided he'd quite like to bring Bobby back in 1992. The issue? The WWF's audience had completely changed, so not many remembered who Backlund was.
It wasn't like they could just look him up on Wikipedia either. This was the early-90s, so if you didn't know an older family member who'd been watching wrestling in Bob's prime then you were out of luck. You'd just have to put up with the goofball pasty dude with the red trunks who yelled, "Oooooh noooo" as he was being battered by heels on Superstars and Wrestling Challenge.
Hulk Hogan had drastically changed what was expected from top WWF superstars, then workhorses like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels came along to offer something different. They served something different in a positive, dynamic and youthful way. Backlund didn't. To kids, he was someone's nerdy uncle saying: 'Gee, I'd quite like to give this WWF thing a try myself'.
Mercifully, things would improve once Bob turned heel and started actively campaigning against the 'New Generation'. He'd win an unlikely WWF Title yet again, but viewers were in on the act by that point. The same cannot be said for his re-arrival in '92. What a shell suit though, to be fair.