8 Wrestling Gimmicks That Totally Ripped-Off Musicians

It's gotta be hard coming up with interesting new gimmicks in an industry as old as stones, especially when trying to serve so many masters. Anything too outlandish is immediately derided as hokey by a hardcore audience which pretends workrate is king (whilst harbouring boatloads of nostalgia for early-'90s WWF), whilst anything too subtle - or frankly, boring - doesn't trouble the merchandise stand's inventory. It's a real head-scratcher.

'Stone Cold' Steve Austins and Hulk Hogans are once-a-generation superstars, if that, and even they went through various iterations before striking gold. Such characters weren't arrived at after months of painstaking planning by canny promoters, but the time-honoured tradition of flinging the proverbial at a wall until something sticks.

Which is why we've had wrestling plumbers, wrestling porn stars, and yes, thanks to TNA, wrestling penises. 'Inspiration' - if you can call it that - is drawn from everywhere, as bookers desperately scramble for the next killer gimmick that might just get Ed Leslie over.

The music industry is one particular well they keep drinking from. It makes sense: if a pop star has already done the legwork gaining widespread appeal, why not just copy it wholesale?

Except it doesn't really make too much sense, does it? Because these are wrestlers, not singers. More often than not, it's all a bit, well, sh*t - as several of these lads prove.