10 Worst WWE Ring Names

As performers on global television, a WWE star’s name is, naturally, quite an important detail. 

While some WWE stars are so good that they can overcome a rubbish name and enjoy much success, others weren’t given a hope due to what WWE decided they’d be known as. 

These are the 10 Worst WWE Ring Names. 

10. Beaver Cleavage

Tag team wrestlers embarking on a singles run isn’t anything new in professional wrestling, and when Headbanger Mosh’s partner Thrasher went down with an injury in 1999, Charles ‘Chaz’ Warrington saw it as an opportunity to make a mark on his own. 

Unfortunately for Warrington, he was saddled with a combination of the worst gimmick imaginable – a manchild who it was implied still enjoyed his mother’s breast milk – with one of the worst names ever. 

Harry ‘Beaver’ Cleavage was inspired by Theodore ‘Beaver’ Cleaver, the title character of feel-good 1950s sitcom Leave it to Beaver.

Chaz could have had 10 times the charisma of The Rock and been a better worker than “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and he wouldn’t have been able to overcome the name Beaver Cleavage. Luckily for him, it was a short-term run and he changed to wrestling as simply 'Chaz' after just a few painful weeks. 

9. Just Joe

Joe Hitchen was a hardworking performer who toiled on the indie scene and wrestled internationally for years – often alongside his friends Edge, Christian and Rhyno – before being signed by WWE in 2000.

Hitchen had performed as Joe Legend or Joe E. Legend on the indies, but WWE decided to change the wrestler’s name to Just Joe. Not simply Joe, but Just Joe. The name only became more confusing, however, as on-screen graphics sometimes introduced him as ‘Joe’, while Hitchen’s titantron noted he was ‘Joe, Just Joe', like a twisted version of James Bond's greeting.

Just Joe’s gimmick was that of a backstage pot-stirrer who overheard things and then would go stooge people off as a way to continue other wrestlers’ storylines, including the Triple H/Stephanie McMahon/Kurt Angle love triangle.

It wasn’t the greatest gimmick in the world, granted, but with a name like Just Joe, it was never going to be.

8. Shorty G

Chad Gable is a great pro wrestler and he can just about do it all inside the squared circle, but he was often held back in his WWE career due to simply not being tall enough for Vince McMahon. 

Gable’s lack of height was turned into a storyline in 2019, as Baron Corbin incessantly mocked him for the crime of being five foot eight. Rather than get mad about it, Chad embraced the name ‘Shorty Gable’, but decided to abbreviate it to 'Shorty G.' To only make matters worse, Gable ended up wrestling in a basketball outfit. 

Gable would use the gimmick for a year until 2020, and he admitted after ditching the gimmick that it was carthatic to do so:

"When I got that chance to decide that I wanted to move on from ‘Shorty G’ and I was no longer gonna be that guy, I can’t tell you how cathartic it felt. It felt so good to say ‘I’m done with that.' I just know how many people go through that and feel that way about different aspects of their life, whether it’s their job or just certain things they’re going through and they say, ‘I wanna be done with that’ and I got to do that and just say, ‘I’m finished. It’s over, no more,’ and yeah, it felt so good and I’m so happy."

7. Michael McGillicutty

While the likes of Randy Orton and Dominik Mysterio have been allowed to carry on the family legacy by retaining their surnames, others haven’t been so lucky. One of those wrestlers was Joe Hennig, son of Curt ‘Mr. Perfect’ Hennig and grandson of Larry ‘The Axe’ Hennig, who ended up as Michael McGillicutty as part of the Nexus. 

Hennig later admitted he thought the name was a rib when he first heard about it (via text) and that the change broke his heart, especially as he just wanted to use his real name and had done so as part of WWE developmental in FCW. McGillicutty didn’t last long, and then he became Curtis Axel, which wasn’t amazing but was a whole lot better than his Nexus gimmick. 

“I’ve always wanted my name. My last name means the world to me. The name Hennig. I fought it the whole time I was up there. I fought it when I became Curtis Axel. Even Heyman [Paul Heyman] tried helping me get that name, my name back. They just wouldn’t budge. I was fine with Curtis Axel, you take Curt, Curtis, and Axe is Larry ‘The Axe’, so it was cool and that was fine with me, but I always wanted to be Joe Hennig. When I was in developmental in FCW, I was Joe Hennig. I won the world championship there as Joe Hennig, and once I got brought up, they changed my name, I thought it was some kind of rib. It wasn’t. When I come back, that’s something I’m going to work out. I’m not doing anything except be Joe Hennig,” he said on Busted Open Radio. 

H/T Fightful

6. Thurman 'Sparky' Plugg

The rough-nosed veteran version of Hardcore Holly was the closest to the true personality of Robert Howard. Hardcore Holly was also a pretty cool name, a name he had earned considering what he’d had to put up with beforehand. 

After performing on the indies, Holly joined WWE in 1994 and was immediately given the corny gimmick of a race car driving pro wrestler. 

To give WWE some credit, Holly did actually race cars as a hobby and this was during an era where occupation-based gimmicks were all over WWE TV. They did him no favours whatsoever with the name Thurman ‘Sparky’ Plugg, though. 

Now, Thurman Plugg would, on its own, be a contender for worst WWE name ever, but the addition of the nickname ‘Sparky’ meant that it was a sure thing. Holly himself loathed the name and has spoken about how he would try not to tell people it when he met them and they found out he was a wrestler. 

Eventually, Bob went to Vince McMahon and asked that the name be changed, before settling for Bob ‘Spark Plug’ Holly. 

5. Isaac Yankem DDS

Before he found fame as Kane or even infamy as the fake Diesel, Glenn Jacobs was brought in as Jerry Lawler’s kayfabe personal dentist in Isaac Yankem DDS to help destroy The King’s nemesis Bret Hart in 1995.

WWE went the bad pun route for the dentist gimmick, dubbing him Isaac Yankem DDS, simply because he pulled teeth. 

According to Bruce Prichard, this was an old joke Bobby Heenan used to tell, so the company went with it for a short time. Luckily for Jacobs, he managed to go on and have a Hall of Fame run as Kane, but Isaac Yankem DDS remains one of the worst names in WWE history.

4. Bastion Booger

After a career wrestling in Canada, Mexico, Japan, WCW, and elsewhere, Mike Shaw made it to WWE in 1993, where he was given a mad monk gimmick and christened Friar Ferguson. 

A poor character with a lame alliterative name, the good news for Shaw was that Friar Ferguson only lasted one match before pressures from the church forced WWE to scrap it.

The bad news for Shaw was what came after. Bastion Booger was a gluttonous pig of a man who wrestled in the least flattering attire imaginable and was often seen munching on platters full of fatty food. 

Everything about Bastion Booger was childish and seemingly designed to punish Shaw, and it was no great shock to see him leave the company after a little over a year, though the name continued to haunt the man formerly known as Norman the Lunatic and Makhan Singh. 

3. Meat

When Shawn Stasiak got his big break in WWE, he wasn’t pushed based on the fact he was the son of one-time WWE Champion Stan Stasiak. Instead, he received the gimmick of a muscled-up, woman-chasing stud who wore trunks designed to look like actual Y-fronts and engaged in a storyline where he was physically exhausted after trying to satisfy too many women at once. 

Stasiak could have adopted his father’s old nickname and dubbed himself ‘The Man’, but no. Meat went on to have almost no success and was basically a glorified jobber by the time he began wrestling under his real name. 

He didn’t have a great deal of success as plain old Shawn Stasiak, either, but he was no doubt thankful to no longer be Meat.

2. The Red Rooster

There have been plenty of WWE superstars named after animals who went on to have legendary runs, with the British Bulldog and Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts being just two examples. 

Terry Taylor was a decent worker who had spent the 1980s wrestling in various territories before joining WWE in 1988. He initially wrestled as undercard babyface ‘Scary’ Terry Taylor before being welcomed into the Heenan Family and given the most fowl moniker imaginable of the Red Rooster. 

Despite being a heel managed by The Brain, The Red Rooster had absolutely no chance of ascending to the heights of some of Heenan’s previous charges.

In addition to the awful name, Taylor had a crimson comb and use to strut around the ring like a chicken, making it hard to take him seriously, but Terry had zero chance of success the moment WWE gave him his new name. 

1. Every Member of RETRIBUTION (Except Mustafa Ali)

People fondly remember The Nexus, that renegade band of rookies who took matters into their own hands and, before they got Cena’d into oblivion, looked like they could be genuine players. Yet those same people tend to forget that some Nexus members had names like Skip Sheffield, Husky Harris, and the aforementioned Michael McGillicutty. 

What the RETRIBUTION stable – who were quite possibly the worst thing about WWE's product during the COVID-19 pandemic – would have given to have names a fraction as good as those, having been given the the names T-Bar, Mace, Reckoning, Retaliation and Slapjack.

Even if Retribution had been booked strongly, there was no getting past their ludicrous and not at all intimidating monikers, which could very easily be changed to T-Bag, Slapnuts, etc. 

Shane Haste (the unfortunate man behind the Slapjack mask) has since said that the group knew the names were goofy from the off, while a report claimed the reveal of the names was met with laughter from others backstage. 

Even in a locker room populated by people who use pretend, often ridiculous names, the ones used by Retribution stood out as particularly silly.