Like any TV show, film or theatre performance, WWE is an entirely scripted production reliant on the talent of its cast of actors - or "Superstars" - and props to create credible characters, narratives and environments that are capable of moving an audience to momentarily suspend their disbelief toward the brutal, high octane stage play being acted out in front of their eyes and believe that every punch, kick, suplex and steel chair shot is as real as the air they breathe. Ever since the inception of WWE just a little over 35 years ago, weapons and props have become a vitally important facet of the overall presentation - never more so than in the Attitude era - with a majority of the foreign objects regularly seen inside and out of the squared circle wielded by one superstar as an appliance of pain to bludgeon an opponent into oblivion, while other less harmful props and accessories are used for the purposes of entertainment as opposed to raw brutality. Without them, you have to admit, professional wrestling would be excruciatingly stale. In that respect, many WWE superstars have come to be identified by the weapons or props they carry, forging an synonymous, everlasting bond with a particular object to the extent that it is interwoven into their wrestling identity, coming to symbolise the essence and idiosyncrasies of the character which they portray - in essence, a physical embodiment of their in-ring persona. With that in mind, these are 15 WWE superstars from past and present whose characters can been defined by their trademark weapons and props.
