Wrestling Gimmicks So Bad They Were Dropped Immediately

After Dustin Rhodes, who had been an icon of the WWE's Attitude Era as Goldust, jumped ship to WCW, they decided to repackage him as a much darker character, known as Seven. A white-faced demonic entity who lured children into serving him for God knows what reason, GhostDust was a genuinely unnerving sight.

The higher ups at Turner Broadcasting Corporation, who owned WCW, got spooked as well, but not of the character. Rather, they freaked about the whole child abduction aspect of Seven, and thus the character was already dead even as he floated to the ring one night on Nitro, while fans were expecting to see what horrors would await. What they got instead was Rhodes going off script and delivering one of the most vicious tongue lashings ever witnessed in wrestling, or possibly even human history. Dustin crapped on WWE for having him be Goldust, before turning his scorn on WCW for making him dress up "like Uncle Fester," and for firing his father Dusty from the company. Although the whole thing was orchestrated by WCW head writer Vince Russo, wrestling fans still don't typically expect a "hey, this isn't real" spiel in the middle of the show, so they were pretty shocked.

Dustin ultimately got what he said he wanted: the chance to be himself, playing the "American Nightmare," a persona his brother Cody would make far better use of twenty years later in New Japan Pro Wrestling, as a member of the Bullet Club. But in 1999, WCW was where ambition and promise went to die, as far as up-and-coming wrestlers were concerned, and so Dustin soon returned to WWE, becoming his seemingly despised Goldust character for good.

In 2016, after a very well-received heel run unfortunately got cut short by injury, WWE's Emma announced her return to the ring via a new character change. She described it as a makeover from Emma to "Emmalina," and showed us a lot of photos that wouldn't have been out of place in a Vanity Fair spread. The character seemed to be patterned after some sort of Instagram/fashion model, or possibly old-school divas like Sunny and The Kat. Fans didn't seem to show much interest, so while the vignettes said Emmalina would be premiering "soon," WWE apparently decided "meh." "Soon" wound up being four+ months of "she's coming soon" empty promises.

Then, the day finally came. Emmalina was finally here! Or ... not. In a voice that sounded like Fran Drescher getting a colonoscopy, Emmalina informed the RAW crowd that now they would get to witness "the makeover of Emmalina ... to Emma." Then, she turned around and walked right to the back, leaving the audience and commentators feeling like a bride that just discovered her beloved husband had another wife five states over.

In the aftermath, news would surface that Emmalina had gone over like a fart in church during rehearsals, so WWE decided that the character should be scrapped ... at least for now. There is a possibility that another woman might get the character, but whomever it is, it certainly won't be Evil Emma.

Desperate to connect with the kids of today (today being the mid-90s), WCW took a look at the hottest videogames, like Mortal Kombat, and were inspired to create ... cheap Mortal Kombat knockoffs. Just what every wrestling fan didn't want.

First, they brought out their K-Mart Sub-Zero, the mighty Glacier, and had him wrestle under blue lights (we weren't kidding about the K-Mart thing) with snow falling over the arena. No fatalities, sadly. Shortly thereafter, he encountered his blood rival, the green monster Mortis (Reptile with a skull-face). The two fought tooth-and-nail against each other in their pay-per-view debut — after Glacier won, the third in this plagiarized trio, Wrath (one of those MK 4 jabronis nobody played as, probably), would make himself known and attack Glacier. The trio feuded for a few months, with Mortis and Wrath stealing Glacier's helmet, and Glacier enlisting the services of karate champion Ernest "The Cat" Miller (Jax by way of Johnny Cage) to even the odds. However, everything came to an abrupt end when Glacier turned on Miller during a tag match against Wrath and Mortis, allowing them to win.

Wrath and Mortis would vanish after that, and Glacier would limp along as a jobber (wrestle-speak for "total loser") for about another year. Then, he was repackaged as, um, a high school wrestling coach. That makes stolen video game characters seem attractive by comparison.

Mike Awesome jumped to WCW with some of the most promising buzz possible: he came while still ECW World Champion, causing a huge amount of consternation that ended in one of the most outrageous cross-promotional events ever: WWF's Tazz winning the ECW title from WCW's Mike Awesome at an ECW pay-per-view.

WCW, being the screw-ups they were, inevitably found a way to blow all of Awesome's heat. First, they saddled him with the moniker "Fat Chick Thrilla," where he proclaimed his love for large women, mainly by giving them tons of food. After that lovely bit of body shaming, Awesome must have been desperate for a new lease on life, which would explain why he went with his next atrocious gimmick so readily.

Awesome was rechristened "That '70s Guy." No, you don't get bonus points for knowing where that name came from, especially since he suddenly had a slight resemblance to a certain sitcom character. He showed up to matches looking like he bus-jacked the Partridge Family, but even bad-ass moments like nearly murdering Insane Clown Posse's Shaggy 2 Dope couldn't make the character happen, and soon the matter was closed by the WWF purchasing WCW.

In later years, Awesome would claim that his lack of success in WCW was because of Hulk Hogan, though not in the usual "Hogan played politics and buried me" way. Awesome was friendly with the Hulkster's nephew Horace, and after Hogan and WCW parted ways on less-than-friendly terms, Awesome claimed he was punished by proxy with those dumb gimmicks. So be careful who gets a job, because it may just be the same idiot who helps you lose it.

Over his twenty-plus year run as Kane, the scarred, pyromaniac brother of the Undertaker, Glenn Jacobs has made it into wrestling legend with multiple championship reigns, insane feats of violence, and a fanatical hatred of Pete Rose. But you can't grow a flower without burying it in a couple feet of crap, and Jacobs had a lot of crap to wade through before he made it to the Big Red Machine. Probably the most cruel and ridiculous of his awful gimmicks was the Christmas Creature. A giant green apparition clad in the remains of a Michael's Christmas clearance sale, the only thing diabolical about Christmas Creature was the amount of tinsel strapped to his body.

As fellow wrestler Mad Man Pondo tells it, the character inspired a lot more chuckles than screams, and thankfully had a short shelf life. Sadly, Jacobs still had a imposter Diesel run, and some time as Jerry Lawler's evil dentist to look forward to. After that, he got to be Kane. Maybe we'll see the Christmas Creature again this year, since Kane is running for political office, and what could be better attack ad fodder for Kane's opponents?

If you ever run into someone who thinks racism died with the '60s, show them Kerwin White and you might change their mind. In 2005, WWE thought it would be an awesome idea to have Chavo Guerrero — third-generation scion of a proud lucha libre family — denounce his Hispanic heritage and become Kerwin White, a middle-class Republican whitebread golfer, with blond hair and a poor man's Frank Sinatra as his theme. It was a literal, and figurative, whitewashing in every sense of the word. Chavo liked the character a bit, saying it helped him distance himself from his beloved uncle and ex-tag team partner Eddie, but nobody else did, especially when he was spouting his absolute gem of a catchphrase: "If it's not White, it's not right."

Despite the character not taking off, and how it probably would've petered out on its own anyway, it took too heavy a price to get Chavo away from the golf clubs: the death of his uncle Eddie in 2005 of heart failure. But the Kerwin White shenanigans did have one great silver lining, in that it allowed WWE fans an introduction to Kerwin's caddy: future world champion, and full-time show-off, Dolph Ziggler.

For some reason, wrestling loves its Christmas gimmicks, even though you can't do a damn thing with them from January to November.

This here's Xanta Klaus, the Bizarro to Santa's Superman. Apparently, he stole presents from good little children, so if you're ever wondering who these heartless monsters are who swipe from Toys For Tots, here's Suspect #1. Sometimes clad in a black Santa suit, and also sometimes sporting a coal-black beard, ECW's Balls Mahoney allied with Ted DiBiase to try and put the screws to Christmas, for no discernible reason — old-school bad guys didn't really need a motive to be bad besides "we're bad." However, even the legendary Million Dollar Man couldn't make Christmas miracles happen for Xanta Claus, and he disappeared into ugly memory after about a half-dozen appearances. Ho ho no mo'.

Dear wrestling: anything can be a gimmick, but that doesn't mean anything should. Case in point: TL Hopper, the WWF's resident evil plumber. He apparently was good enough at his post that he had time to wrestle, in spite of the amount of junk food and beer going around WWF arenas, and eventually into the toilets.

Portrayed by one Tony Anthony, the wrestling gimmick apparently came thanks to McMahon learning Anthony's father was a plumber. This made him a real "son of a plumber," unlike that faker, Dusty Rhodes. Rather impressively, TL Hopper was a lot less attractive than the blobby, splotchy Rhodes. Balding and mulleted, and holding and kissing his toilet plunger like a pet cat, he was a pretty tough sight for anyone's eyes. He didn't last long, because Vince McMahon shockingly had no interest in pushing such a character. We'll tell you why it really failed, though: not enough buttcrack.