8 Times WWE Went Scottish

Infamous for a tame and cynical out-of-the-ring moment we'll get to in a second, The Highlanders surprisingly surpass even Roddy Piper for WWE's most glaring Scottish dalliance, more so for just how bloody 'WWE' the whole shambles was.

Debuting in 2006 (approximately 10 years past the gimmick's sell-by date) Robbie and Rory had the dubious honour of being tag team weaklings in a field that then 'boasted' Cheerleaders and Cowboys that had been decimated all year by DX, and makeshift combos you wouldn't even team up on SmackDown vs Raw games like Charlie Haas and Viscera. Worse still were their patronising introductory vignettes, which featured the Oban natives staring wide-eyed at big cities, cars, cake...basically anything that wasn't from caveman times, which apparently must be where Scottish people still reside. Bushwhackers for the internet age, the poor sods were paraded as Celtic berks, bumbling their way through the modern WWE world until they were reduced to jobbing duties on Heat, which itself was looking at the proverbial lights as a TV/Web show at the time.

The true descent south came in 2008 though, when after Rory went down with a torn pectoral muscle, Robbie added insult to literal injury, making a trip to the TNA Impact Zone days before WrestleMania XXIV to sit in the stands and watch his mates wrestle. The sh*tehawks in TNA didn't need to show him on camera of course, but they did anyway, effectively burying both guys and their condescending gimmick for good.

A shoddy tale of mid-2000s WWE woe with a pitiful conclusion, neither man ever made further dents in wrestling's promised land, and their casting as Scottish buffoons didn't help the trajectory of fellow lost cause and previously mentioned Drew McIntyre, who had to rebuild the simple act of just 'being Scottish' from the ground up so soon in their shadows.