There was a time in professional wrestling, specifically the WWE, where gimmicks were all the rage for the characters on the main roster. Those gimmicks often took the form of careers like garbage men, dentists, or police officers and the names associated with those gimmicks were laughable by today's wrestling standards. Even today, the wrestling industry tries to capitalize on trends that resonate with the audience, oftentimes falling flat on their face in the process.
No year demonstrated the ridiculous nature of bad wrestling gimmicks than the year 1995. That particular year had around 65-70 wrestlers circle through WWE and among them were some of the most outrageous characters you could imagine. Many of them didn't last and some of them are remembered as perhaps the worst ideas ever written down on paper and then actually past the draft stage and were brought to life in a WWE ring.
The Introduction Of Some Outrageous Characters
While personalities like Doink the Clown and The Brooklyn Brawler were still going strong and a talent like Irwin R. Schyster was working his way out of the picture, the year might be best known for being one in which the Goldust character was introduced to WWE (then WWF) fans. The gimmick was so outlandish, it was hard not to be enthralled by it and Goldust proved to be a huge hit for WWE, a character that could only have been played by Dustin Rhodes. The gimmick still holds a place near and dear to wrestling fans even if his introduction to the wrestling world was highly controversial.
Goldust was by no means the only strange idea Vince McMahon and the creative team had. There were returns for some talented stars, such as Shane Douglas returning to the WWF with a college dean character under the ring name Dean Douglas. It was a total disaster. Of course, there was Phantasio, who was supposed to be a magician. There was also a strange tag team known as Techno Team 2000. And, who could forget Balls Mahoney of ECW fame showing up as an evil version of Santa known as Xanta Klaus.
But, none of these were nearly as bad as Mantaur, which has to rank as one of the all-time silliest gimmicks in wrestling history. He was half-man, half-minotaur. It's not clear who came up with that idea, but someone must have thought it was a winner because he was given a full headpiece and all.
The Year of Recycled Stars?
It wasn't just bad character ideas that made the year stand out as one of the more interesting times in WWE history. No, it was the company's willingness to recycle stars in different forms with no real consequence as to whether or not they'd be recognizable. For example, Papa Shango was repackaged as Kama, Glenn Jacobs was known as Isaac Yankem, DDS,
Carl Joseph Yvon Ouellet was once known as Jean-Pierre LaFitte and became a pirate, and Al Snow was going by the name Avatar. That's just to name a few.
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These were faces fans had already seen that were simply repackaged and spit back out there with a different gimmick, with hopes of a better result. Sometimes it worked, often it didn't. Essentially, WWE was putting wrestlers in a blender, coming up with different characters, and began throwing them against the wall to see what would stick.
WWE Tried Capitalizing on Trends
Bless their hearts, WWE probably meant well. The idea was to come up with larger-than-life characters that were straight out of a comic book. Some of the gimmicks tested were ones that worked in movies, that would have been great villains on the pages of graphic novels or been heroes in an alternate universe. Unfortunately, most fans weren't quite ready to make that leap and the gimmicks never lasted.
Dan Spivey debuted in WWE as Waylon Mercy, a gimmick inspired by Robert DeNiro's character in the movie Cape Fear. There were also a couple of musicians on the roster. One in the form of Double J Jeff Jarrett, the other in the form of Man Mountain Rock. Imagine Elias, but picture a big dude in tie-dye shirts who played a WWF logo guitar before every match. And, while he wasn't a magician, Rad Radford loved grunge music and that's what his character was known for. Other than the fact the person who played Radford, ECW's Louie Spicolli was highly-respected in the wrestling world, just the fact he loved grunge and his name had the word rad in it is also you need to know.
All we can say is, thank goodness 1995 is also the year WWF programming started moving away from the "your job is your gimmick" phase to the attitude era.
