8 Wrestlers Who HATED Their Own Gimmicks

When an aspiring wrestler first dreams about getting into the business they hold dear, they all aim to be the very best version of themselves, fighting for championship gold and being a hero or villain to millions of fans around the world. What many (if not all) of them don't bank on is creative having something totally different in mind for their careers.

All it takes is one bad idea or joke inside the writing room to land a little too cleanly, and any superstar can find themselves saddled with a gimmick that's going to make their lives hell. One minute you're trying to make a name for yourself with your superior wrestling skills, the next you're the butt of a thousand jokes that you never signed up for.

Try as they might to do the best job that they could, these wrestlers were saddled with God-awful gimmicks that ruined their enjoyment of the industry they adore. From clucking like a farmyard animal to farting and having to play a character from the cosmos (?!), these are 8 gimmicks that wrestlers absolutely hated trying to make work.

Hated!

Adopting the character of Stardust was an incredibly bleak period in the life of Cody Rhodes.

He's a man who's incredibly dedicated to his craft, so he threw his all into the cosmic superstar, but time has proved this to be an unfathomable waste of his talents as a wrestler and someone who can draw waves of emotion from WWE's fanbase.

Looking at the character through the lens of the enormous success he's enjoyed since being granted his release in May 2016, this was simply an insane 2 years in Cody's life. He debuted on the 14 June 2014 episode of Raw by humping the tron, thus setting the tone for the hyperactive intergalactic menace. Cody has revealed retrospectively that his intention was to play the character like Jim Carrey's portrayal of The Riddler in Batman Forever, which he actually did to a solid standard.

There are some revisionist takes on Stardust out there, and in truth the character itself was conceptually sound. Cody lived the gimmick like a method actor, but the creative around Stardust was nonsense. Cody is now polite about those years, but Brandi Rhodes has revealed the depths of despair that her husband went through in his 2-year run as Stardust in many interviews over the years.