9 Wrestlers Who Went To Insane Lengths Researching Their Gimmicks

Michael Cole is not a wrestler, granted, but if you're a long-time viewer of Monday Night Raw then you may recall that he did assume the guise of an intensely annoying heel for a couple of years, culminating with a blow-off match against Jerry Lawler at WrestleMania XXVII.

To do this, Cole needed to get in shape, and that's exactly what he did. There are before and after pictures on WWE.com to prove it, and though he's obviously exhaling in one and posing like Hulk Hogan in the other, he clearly shifted a fair few pounds.

It's not as though he was enormous before, to be fair: he's always looked like a pretty normal 40-something-year-old man. But it's understandable if someone starts getting a complex when they spend all day in the company of men like John Cena and Seth Rollins.

Oh, and that match at WrestleMania? It completely sucked, so any hard yards he put in at the gym ultimately went completely to waste. That's wrestling for you.