Jon Heidenreich (yep, Heidenreich was his real name) could lay claim to having one of the most bizarre careers in WWE history.
He is everything Vince McMahon loves — he’s big, has a good look, a former football player, what could possibly go wrong? WWE did everything they could to make him a success for the three years Heidenreich was on WWE TV, throwing a bizarre array of different characters and storylines at the big man.
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The Many Characters Of Heidenreich
Heidenreich made his WWE debut on the September 29, 2003, episode of Raw. In his debut, he came out showing signs of insanity, talking to seemingly nobody and claiming to be controlled by “Little Johnny.” It was never revealed on TV but the idea was that “Little Johnny” was a doll from Heidenreich’s childhood, a doll who was supposed to represent his inner child, who was mad at the world for being teased about being fat. Honestly, it was a bad idea done badly. The story was quickly dropped.
Heidenreich needed a new gimmick and former WWE writer Dan Madigan had the idea of a lifetime! Madigan pitched that Heidenreich would return as a Nazi soldier named Baron Von Bava. He would have been cryogenically frozen before being revived by Smackdown GM Paul Heyman (who let’s not forget was a Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor…).
Von Bava would have worn the red armband with the swastika and would even goosestep to the ring. The pitch from Madigan was considered so shocking that Vince McMahon himself left the writers' room speechless and would not return for the rest of the day. Needless to say, the pitch led to Madigan leaving WWE later that year.
Heyman did end up managing Heidenreich in the next stage of his WWE career though, thankfully without any Nazi imagery. Heidenreich debuted on the August 26, 2004 episode of Smackdown under the control of Paul Heyman. With Heyman as his manager, surely Heyman would do all the talking for him, right?
Wrong!
Heidenreich was a psychopath, attacking fans, interfering in random matches and he did his own talking in the form of poems. Calling them “Disasterpieces”, his poetry would depict how much he hates the world and how he was going to destroy his opponents. It was during this time when Heidenriech would have the most memorable story of his career — The assault of Michael Cole.
Assaulting Cole in the backstage area, Heidenreich pinned Cole against a wall and spoke longingly about their mutual wants and desires before reading him one of his poems. In an interview with The Shoot Radio in 2008, Heidenreich revealed the idea came from Vince McMahon himself who apparently came up with it in a dream one night. Heidenreich said that Pulp Fiction came to mind when he heard it, and that he was glad that he was the one dealing it out as opposed to receiving it.
Charming.
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Heidenreich’s Biggest Push Came As Tag Team Partner To Road Warrior Animal
All of this led to a feud with the Undertaker. The dramatic feud was excruciatingly horrible, starting when Heidenreich had cost the Undertaker a WWE title as a result of one of his random interferences. Even with Heyman’s involvement, the feud failed to get over during the almost 4 months it ran for.
After the Undertaker feud, Heidenreich was firmly planted in the lower card but managed to get a surprising reprieve in the form of the Legion of Doom. Road Warrior Animal returned to WWE in 2005 and started teaming with Heidenreich. At the 2005 Great American Bash Animal and Heidenreich managed to win the WWE Tag Team Championships in a match Animal had personally dedicated to his late partner Hawk.
That was the highest point of the team, as WWE would then turn them into the new Legion Of Doom, having Heidenreich paint his face and come out to the ring wearing the famous spiked shoulder pads. Unfortunately, the team was hated by fans and critics alike, and Animal and Heidenreich had little chemistry in the ring and Heidenreich was in no way, shape, or form a good replacement for the irreplaceable Road Warrior Hawk. LOD 2005, as they were called, lasted around six months before Heidenreich was released from his WWE contract at the start of 2006.
Heidenreich wasn’t just a guy with one bad gimmick, he was a guy in which every gimmick he ended up doing turned into an absolute disaster! Whether it was WWE’s fault or Heidenreich’s is up for debate but what is absolutely certain is that it was one of the most bizarre careers in WWE history.
