10 Current WWE Stars Once Saddled With Terrible Gimmicks

WWE are currently experiencing a bit of a renaissance where it feels like everything is firing on all cylinders.

The crowds are huge, the storylines are inspired and the vast majority of the roster seems to have a firm grasp on their characters and creative direction. For a fair few of them, it wasn’t always that way, since under a previous regime they were tasked with trying to pull off some impossibly shoddy personas.

These are 10 current WWE stars once saddled with TERRIBLE gimmicks.

10. Drew McIntyre

The brooding, ultra-serious, so-called Scottish Psychopath has been one of WWE’s most consistent performers since returning to the company’s main roster in 2018.

It has been quite the startling turnaround, because Drew McIntyre’s WWE career was going nowhere fast when he was deemed expendable in 2014.

The man once dubbed ‘The Chosen One’ by Vince McMahon himself had been considered a future WrestleMania main-eventer and world champion, but lost his way and wound up playing second fiddle to Heath Slater in the Three-Man Band group.

3MB were a fun stable and had their moments, yes, but it was a midcard gimmick all the way and had a very obvious shelf life from the get-go.

McIntyre never looked completely comfortable goofing off and playing air guitar in those leather pants and there is a reason WWE rarely brings up this period of his career.

Reflecting on his time as a rockstar ripoff years later, Drew admitted that it was a somewhat mortifying experience, though did concede that it showed him to take things less seriously sometimes and credited it with getting him to move out of his comfort zone.

9. Natalya

Remember when WWE gave third-generation member of the legendary Hart family Natalya the gimmick that she had nasty flatulence? Ah, the ‘good old days’ when WWE creative really was geared towards an audience of one.

The daughter of Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart is, these days, one of the most respected veterans on the WWE roster, a dependable ever-present who can be counted on to do anything from guiding an inexperienced rookie through an early TV outing to competing for a title in a headline bout.

She can pretty much do it all, but back in 2012 the best WWE creative could come up with her was a pumping problem.

Nattie Neidfart caused her fellow divas, wrestlers and even referees to gag on her stench, but beyond the gross-out factor we’re not sure the gimmick had much of a purpose, besides making a deranged billionaire laugh like Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

The former WWE Women’s Champion quietly dropped the gimmick and soon joined forces with Hornswoggle and The Great Khali, which is pretty much the only time that particular scenario can ever be seen as an ‘improvement’.

8. Chad Gable

A former Olympian who can have a tremendous match with anyone, Chad Gable really does feel like the second coming of Kurt Angle, at least when it comes to his exploits between the ropes.

Gable can entertain and create emotion with his performance from bell to bell and is currently one of the very best in-ring performers on a roster that is certainly not lacking in that department.

At some point, however, someone must have thought Chad was lacking a bit of flavour and decided to give him an image change.

During a feud with Baron Corbin, the five-foot-eight Gable was re-christened Shorty Gable (which then became Shorty G), ditching the amateur singlets for a garish combination of basketball-style shorts, vest and sleeves.

You’d assume the merciless bullying about his supposedly hilarious lack of height would lead to…something, anything, productive, but it really didn’t and (after predictably fading from television) he denounced the gimmick on-air and returned to his previous guise.

7. Dijak

It has been heartening to see Dijak get the chance to once again show what he is capable of these past couple of years, making appearances on WWE NXT before he was called back up the main roster in the 2024 WWE Draft.

The big man was one of the masked members of the pitiful Retribution stable, a pandemic-era idea that was clearly not well thought out ahead of time and is roundly regarded as one of the worst factions in WWE history.

T-Bar and regular tag partner Mace may have lost their masks, but their run barely got off the ground when it came to a screeching halt.

T-Bar then floundered on Main Event for an age before Shawn Michaels and Triple H gave him a lifeline down in Orlando.

Dijak publicly noted how grateful he was for it, revealing that he used to tearfully stare at his phone expecting to be future endeavoured while treading water as T-Bar. He also noted that his time in Retribution taught him resilience and have to perspective which, ironically, sound like rejected Retribution member names.

6. Baron Corbin

A multi-talented performer who has been given a new lease on life thanks to NXT is Baron Corbin, whose tag title-winning team with Bron Breakker brought out the Lone Wolf in him once more.

Prior to re-emerging in NXT, Corbin had endured a series of gimmicks that were memorable, if not necessarily any good.

First there was ‘Constable’ Corbin, the ubiquitous Raw authority figure who wrestled in dress pants, shirt and waistcoat and went on to retire Kurt Angle.

A switch to SmackDown meant a change in gimmick and the constable became King, feuding with Roman Reigns in a rivalry that saw both men doused in dog food.

The only way after that was up for ‘Happy’ Corbin, who turned his fortunes around after being declared broke and wound up being managed by JBL.

Yes, it’s been a busy five or so years for Baron Corbin, whose character certainly had a well-defined arc, but this succession of iffy gimmicks definitely contributed to the feeling that he needed a change of scenery for a fresh start.

5. Michael Cole

We appreciate that some of you may not consider longtime WWE announcer Michael Cole a ‘star’ per se, but the man who has been the voice of WWE for the better part of the past fifteen years is an inescapable part of the company’s presentation.

These days Cole is also receiving plaudits for allowing his genuine love of professional wrestling – a term he’s actually allowed to use now – come to the fore, because for the longest time, Michael Cole was viewed as little more than the mouthpiece of Vince McMahon, who would direct the commentator on what to do or say via the backstage ‘Gorilla position’.

It was also McMahon’s decision to turn Cole heel and make him one of the main focuses of WWE television in 2011.

A total turnoff for anyone with good taste, Michael Cole’s reign of tyranny on the Raw brand – which saw him seclude himself in the custom-built ‘Cole Mine’ and target broadcast partners Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler, among other shenanigans – was simply excruciating.

Cole is very good at his job and, to some, may have been an effective heel, but it hurt his credibility with the audience and nobody really ended up benefitting from the heat he generated.

4. LA Knight

One of the great successes of Paul Levesque’s time as the head of WWE creative has been the meteoric (and organic) rise of LA Knight.

The man formerly known as Eli Drake’s popularity is down to his natural charisma and ability to connect with the audience, something that really didn’t come across too well when he was called up from NXT to the main roster.

Debuting on the SmackDown brand as ‘Max Dupri’, Knight was presented as a talent agent for The Maximum Male Models – Mace, Mansoor and Maxxine.

Unsurprisingly, having everything that had worked for him previously stripped away from him didn’t exactly fill the man with confidence. In fact, he initially thought the character pitch was a rib and clashed with Vince McMahon on Max Dupri’s presentation.

McMahon subsequently removed LA from the equation and, according to Mansoor, Knight was almost fired due to his portrayal.

The fact is it was never a good fit and was never going to work. Surprise, surprise, when the situation changed and Levesque was put in charge of creative, LA Knight started to shoot up the card and hasn’t looked back since.

3. Apollo Crews

Apollo Crews is the sort of professional wrestler whose talent really should speak for itself.

A high-flying powerhouse able to do just about anything with ease, Crews is an exciting and dynamic performer who, perhaps, hasn’t always been given the opportunity to show his abundant abilities.

In the run-up to WrestleMania 37, Crews began doing a new gimmick where he embraced his Nigerian heritage.

Which is all well and good, of course, but this was WWE in 2021and Apollo acknowledging his roots was handled with all the subtlety of Saba Simba.

Speaking in an exaggerated accent (which he later admitted to having difficulty doing), Crews was flanked by military men, carried a spear to the ring and claimed to be a member of Nigerian royalty.

It wasn’t great, to be honest, though clearly some people were fans of the shift because Apollo was booked to beat Big E for the Intercontinental Championship – in a ‘Nigerian Drum Fight’, naturally – when they clashed at the Showcase of the Immortals.

Once his 124-day reign came to an end, however, so too did the enthusiasm for pushing the character.

2. Luke Gallows

Drew Hankinson may have always looked like a grizzled veteran, but the man was actually only 22 years old when he made his main roster WWE debut as the fake Kane back in 2006.

That gimmick was short-lived, but Hankinson came back a little over a year later as Festus, the slack-jawed tag team partner of his ‘handler’ Jesse.

Seemingly comatose 99% of the time, Festus would spring into life as soon as the bell rang, transforming into a rampaging, almost unstoppable giant who was focused only on taking down his opponents and winning matches.

Hell, the first time he lost a match was when he passed out to The Undertaker’s Hell’s Gate. Despite this, it wasn’t like WWE had any major plans for a character that was decidedly one-note.

Hankinson eventually dropped the Festus persona and was repackaged as Luke Gallows, a member of the Straight-Edge Society that had been ‘cured’ by group leader CM Punk.

The Good Brother has since made a career out of playing the menacing muscle in tag teams and stables. Big shout out to Sex Ferguson too, who we’re sure can be found somewhere getting his jizz wizz on.

1. Cody Rhodes

Cody Rhodes returned to WWE at WrestleMania 38 as a fully-fledged main event-level star, having made the decision to leave the company almost six years earlier in order to rebuild his name outside of the WWE machine.

Prior to requesting his release, Cody’s time in WWE had been a story of highs and lows and gimmicks and pushes that didn’t quite pan out.

The nadir for the American Nightmare was Stardust, the face-painted supervillain that made Rhodes, in his own words, ‘feel dead inside’.

Despite hating every minute of portraying Stardust, Cody did give it the old college try and seemed committed to the role, at least initially.

After being in the costume for close to two years and doing much of nothing in that time, an increasingly withdrawn Rhodes decided that enough was enough and quit rather than wrestle one more match as The Prince of Dark Matter.

It is a credit to the Grandson of a Plumber that he was able to so effectively rehab his reputation after doing a silly gimmick that, for some, could have been a career-killer. As it is, Stardust was simply a brief chapter in Cody’s much-talked-about story.