Examining the Original Gimmicks of WWE's Past and Present Stars

Finding the right gimmick is a journey in finding the right vehicle for a wrestler's talents, as we have seen with WWE stars like Batista and Dolph Ziggler.

For some men, it's taken years for that process to happen. Sometimes that journey has one try on a series of masks and see which one fits: cowboy, vampire, cheerleader, Christmas creature.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that Batista should be Batista and Ziggler should be the warrior he is today, but WWE stumbled a lot getting to those points. Looking at the original gimmicks several Superstars had in WWE or developmental is a reminder of how many misfires the company has had before hitting its target.

It's a surreal experience, like looking at old pictures and not recognizing yourself.

Steve Austin: The Ringmaster

Strip away Stone Cold Steve Austin's goatee, his beer-drinking celebrations, his penchant for showing off his middle fingers and his take-no-prisoners attitude and you're left with who Austin first was with WWE.

After WCW thought it was wise to make a Texan with a mighty strong accent one-half of The Hollywood Blondes, Austin showed flashes of his now-famous persona when he worked for ECW. He was brash, tough and gritty.

WWE wiped all that away and dubbed him The Ringmaster.

Pairing him with Ted DiBiase couldn't overcome the limitations of the character. Beyond being a master of the ring and extremely confident, who was this guy?

Austin's struggles to answer that question led to him asking for a name change.

As Austin told Eric Alt of the Baltimore Sun, WWE suggested a number of names that weren't to his liking, including Fang McFrost, Ice Dagger and Otto Von Ruthless. It's hard to imagine WWE winning the Monday Night War with Otto Von Ruthless as its top star.

Thankfully, Austin dug into himself until he found his Stone Cold character. The bad man who took over WWE hit all the right buttons with a fanbase looking for something new—an anti-hero to fall for.

The Ringmaster could never have been that. Neither could Fang McFrost.

Bray Wyatt: Duke Rotundo

In hindsight, you can see slivers of Bray Wyatt in Duke Rotundo.

Wyatt's first persona in WWE developmental showed off some of his dark charm, his sinister smile. The blond, open-shirted bounty hunter was goofier than The Eater of Worlds, though. 

He had yet to find his voice. An ominous aura surrounded him, but not one as powerful as the one that would following his jump to his current gimmick.

In between Rotundo and Wyatt, he was Husky Harris. His first WWE run failed largely because none of what made him special was on display with that generic gimmick. At least the bounty hunter had elements for him to build on. Harris was just a face in the crowd that was Nexus.

After WWE demoted him and he briefly tried out being a demented masked villain named Axel Mulligan, Wyatt eventually found a jackpot of a gimmick. He has since become one of WWE's best emerging stars.

The Wyatt character fits him like a second skin. He seems to be as connected to that persona as Steve Austin was to Stone Cold. As he continues to find ways to enthrall as the backwoods cult leader, it's increasingly clear that this was the monster he was born to be all along.

Savio Vega: Kwang the Ninja

It's strange that a hefty, muscular man from Puerto Rico played a masked ninja when he debuted for WWE.

Savio Vega (real name: Juan Rivera) had been working a gimmick with similar elements in Puerto Rico's World Wrestling Council. He worked as TNT, a pseudo-Asian martial arts expert, for that promotion before making his first WWE appearance in 1993.

The ninja gimmick didn't take off. A part of that was that it was too corny and another was that it was ill-fitting.

Vega was not ninja quick. Taking away his ability to talk by virtue of pretending he was Asian held his personality back as well. 

Eventually, he began to wrestle under the Vega name. It wasn't until 1997, though, that WWE played up his Puerto Rican heritage. He began running with a crew called Los Boricuas and donning gear that featured the Puerto Rican flag.

Dolph Ziggler: Nick Nemeth

Reading Dolph Ziggler's bio, it sounds like WWE was trying to make him fail.

Before becoming The Showoff, he was part of a cheerleading squad, and before that, he was Kerwin White's caddy. Casting Chavo Guerrero, a member of the famous Guerrero family, as a snobby white man and golf enthusiast was a mind-blowingly odd choice. Giving a former collegiate wrestler with heartthrob looks the role of his caddy wasn't a great move, either.

It's impressive that Ziggler has made it this far considering where he started.

Both the caddy and the cheerleader gimmicks sound like jokes. For the majority of wrestlers asked to work them, they would have acted like weights around their ankles.

Ziggler hung in there until WWE let him be an amplified version of himself. He was cocky, funny and teeming with energy. 

In danger of becoming this generation's Mike Shaw, Ziggler has managed to move past those unfortunate roles and become one of the company's most popular stars.

John "Bradshaw" Layfield: Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw

It wasn't until well into his WWE career when John Layfield discovered the ideal use of his talents.

A big bruiser from Texas, Layfield wrestled as John Hawk when he debuted for the Global Wrestling Federation. He was a generic, long-haired powerhouse with none of his now-trademark wit on display. WWE welcomed him in 1996.

The company amplified his Texasness, giving him a branding iron and a bull rope. 

As good as he was at handing out punishment, he didn't catch on as well as  he would later. Fans had seen the Texas cowboy gimmick a hundred times at this point with everyone from Ron Bass to Stan Hansen.

He kept shedding layers of skin, getting closer to his true self.

As Ron Simmons' partner in The Acolytes, he ditched his cowboy duds for occult-themed dark attire. When those brawlers became less cult-like and more fight-happy beer-drinkers as the Acolyte Protection Agency, Layfield was just a few steps away from who he would soon become.

The JBL gimmick took him to world-title status. Not only was it original, but it suited better than everything else before it.

Fans had seen cowboys and arrogant rich men in the ring before but never mashed together like this. The role showcased JBL's ability to grate on the audience. It was his best heat-drawing persona thanks to his views on immigration and his constant condescension.   

His story reminds us how difficult it is to find that magic blend of a wrestler's actual personality and the one they put on for TV.

Batista: Leviathan

Before he was The Animal, he was a vampire with a goth fashion sensibility.

When Batista battled to move upward in Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's former developmental system, he did so with black leather wristbands, earrings and a mouth full of fangs. Meanwhile, WWE had the other stars of that class of prospects—Randy Orton, John Cena and Brock Lesnar—all wrestling under their real names with subtle, realistic gimmicks.

The Leviathan concept was out of place.

Had Batista begun his career in the early '90s, he would have fit right in alongside cartoony characters like Adam Bomb. The Attitude Era would have been a decent home for the gimmick as well. He could have joined The Brood or been a part of The Ministry of Darkness.

In an era where over-the-top gimmicks were less commonplace, though, it made more sense to simply make him a big, angry man who went by his last name.

Thankfully, that's the direction WWE eventually took him in after a brief turn as a box-lugging Deacon Batista. 

Kane: Isaac Yankem

Kane is one of wrestling's chameleons.

His current gimmick has had countless incarnations, moving from masked monster to comedy charcter, sadistic pyromaniac to corporate stooge. The success he's had in all of those roles will surprise no one who has followed his career.

In his pre-WWE days, Kane wrestled under various names, including, most inexplicably, The Christmas Creature.

Vince McMahon didn't ask him to wear tinsel around his torso, but he did have some goofy ideas for the big man. Kane's first foray into the WWE world saw him play a demented dentist aligned with Jerry Lawler.

The perfect gimmick should shape how a wrestler acts in the ring. A coward shies away. A hero guts it out. What exactly a dentist does in a fight is unclear.

Isaac Yankem fit in with the outlandish, employment-based gimmicks of the early '90s, but it didn't have staying power.

WWE eventually moved on from the gimmick and had him play a stand-in Diesel before eventually emerging as Kane in 1997. It's hard to imagine what the last 17 years would have been like had Glenn Jacobs not become that horror-movie monster come to life.

Had he remained Dr. Yankem, he'd likely be a footnote in WWE history rather than be en route to a Hall of Fame induction.