Gimmicks are crucial in pro wrestling — not only to wrestlers, but to tag teams, factions, and even certain types of non-wrestling on-screen personalities. It’s the easiest way to distinguish a character or group of characters, and can be as simple as “Irish guy who likes to fight” (Sheamus) or as high-concept as “irradiated survivor of the Three-Mile Island nuclear meltdown” (Adam Bomb).
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That said, not every gimmick necessarily works. While some gimmicks are ill-conceived from the get-go, others are poorly executed, a poor fit for the wrestler portraying it, or end up evolving into something good. Let’s take a look at the past 13 years of bad gimmicks — not only from WWE, but also from Impact Wrestling and even the beloved New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
13 2010: The Anonymous Raw General Manager
Hilariously, the worst gimmick of 2010 was one that technically didn’t even have a person attached to it. After a dismal year of celebrity guests running the show, WWE decided to have a mystery boss for Raw, represented by a laptop on a lectern, with Michael Cole reading the Anonymous Raw General Manager’s dictats and proclamations. This proved extremely unpopular, and ultimately the mystery GM’s identity was revealed to be Hornswoggle as a gag.
12 2011: Okato
As part of Impact Wrestling’s disastrous 2007 to 2011 working relationship with New Japan-Pro Wrestling, the Western promotion served as host to NJPW Young Lion Kazuchika Okada during his obligatory learning excursion. Wrestling as an X-Division undercarder, Okada eventually got repackaged as Okato, Samoa Joe’s sidekick whose whole gimmick was a reference to Kato from The Green Hornet. On top of being culturally insensitive, the gimmick looks even worse in retrospect, given that Okada went on to become a game-changing talent and top star for New Japan.
11 2012: Lord Tensai
After runs in WWE as Albert and A-Train, future NXT head coach Matt Bloom ventured to NJPW, where he wrestled as Giant Bernard and enjoyed a 564-day reign with the IWGP Tag Team Championship with Karl Anderson. In 2012, Bloom returned to WWE, where his experience in Japan led to him being presented as a Japanese foreign heel named Lord Tensai — complete Hakushi-esque face paint and Great Muta style Poison Mist.
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What’s worse is that WWE appeared to quickly lose faith in the gimmick, as Tensai quickly became a jobber before being slotted into a comedy tag team with Brodus Clay.
10 2013: Los Matadores
During their time in WWE, Primo and Epico went through a number of gimmick changes, the most absurd of which went down in 2013. Despite being from the famed Colon wrestling family of Puerto Rico, the cousins were repackaged as the Spanish bullfighting tag team Los Matadores, with Mexican mini wrestler Mascarita Dorada becoming their bull mascot, El Torito. While the group’s one highlight was inarguably the WeeLC match at Extreme Rules 2014, otherwise few fans were particularly enthusiastic about Los Matadores.
9 2014: The New Day
It may seem like sacrilege given how successful the trio’s become, but at the time of their 2014 debut few fans could have predicted that The New Day would last a year, much less nearly a decade. Big E, Xavier Woods, and Kofi Kingston were all treading water when WWE grouped them together as babyface gospel preachers preaching positivity. Fans hated the concept the moment it began, but a much-needed heel turn proved that their partnership had legs, and The New Day ended up capturing 12 tag titles in the years since.
8 2015: MexAmerica
In 2013, Alberto Del Rio and Zeb Colter were on opposite sides of a feud, as Colter was managing Jack Swagger as a Tea Party-themed heel. Two years later, Del Rio and Colter ended up allies, promoting a union between Mexico and the United States that they called “MexAmerica.” Bafflingly, this was meant to be a heel gimmick, which not only contradicted Colter’s whole anti-immigrant persona, but also seemed to assume some pretty serious prejudices of WWE fans. What’s even worse is that the whole concept fizzled out before it could even go anywhere.
7 2016: Bone Soldier
In the mid-to-late 2010s, there wasn’t a hotter promotion than New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and there wasn’t a hotter faction than NJPW’s heel faction Bullet Club. But even a promotion on a hot streak can make a misstep or two, and NJPW’s arguable biggest misstep during this period was the addition of Bone Soldier to the BC.
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A repackaging of the goofball Captain New Japan, Bone Soldier quickly went down as one of the worst additions to Bullet Club thanks to poor in-ring performances and a significance many fans would liken to Virgil in the nWo.
6 2017: Dolph Ziggler
Always one of the more underappreciated staples of WWE throughout the 2010s — at least, underappreciated by WWE itself — Dolph Ziggler rolled out a heel gimmick in 2017 that nobody seemed to appreciate. Fed up with fans only reacting to wrestler entrances, Ziggler began coming out to various iconic entrance themes, including to those of Shawn Michaels and Randy Savage, to troll the fans. Before long, Ziggler’s own theme had his music abruptly stop after a comedic record scratch. This underwhelming gimmick was all in service of setting up a feud with the newly debuted Bobby Roode, who was known for having a memorable entrance theme at the time.
5 2018: Constable Corbin
Over the course of his main roster career, Baron Corbin has enjoyed a number of gimmicks, including being a King of the Ring as well as a poor person covered in mustard stains. However, Corbin was never more hated than his stint as Raw’s resident Constable, which involved a goofy name change into Constable Corbin and adopting a style of dress that made him look like an Applebee’s server. From there, it wasn’t long before Corbin became the brand’s authority figure, making him so overexposed that characters began blaming Raw’s declining viewership on his very existence.
4 2019: Shorty G
Over a year after he was a blight upon Raw, Constable Corbin — then known as King Corbin — became the catalyst to the worst gimmick of 2019. A feud with Chad Gable saw Corbin mocking Gable’s height, which in turn resulted in Gable being billed under the demeaning ring name of Shorty Gable. This was eventually truncated into the even more demeaning Shorty G.
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This new Shorty G gimmick did no favors for the former Chad Gable, especially as his basketball uniform-looking gear further infantilized the underrated talent.
3 2020: Retribution
While COVID wreaked havoc on pro wrestling as well as the world at large, in late summer of 2020 WWE appeared to be embarking on its next big storyline as an invading mystery faction known as Retribution were causing chaos all over Raw and SmackDown. While it certainly piqued fans' curiosity, the whole Retribution gimmick fell apart as soon as its primary members were revealed. NXT standouts like Dominik Dijakovic and Shane Thorne were given goofy names like T-Bar and Slapjack, and WWE immediately lost faith in the group as it was subjected to loads of fan mockery.
2 2021: Nikki A.S.H.
In the 2000s, WWE had a noted superhero gimmick in the form of fan favorite comedic relief character The Hurricane, but returned to the well in 2021 by repackaging Nikki Cross into a similar character. Redubbed Nikki A.S.H. — short for “Almost A Superhero” — the silly gimmick was a strange fit for a wrestler fans were first introduced to as an energetic chaos demon. Despite the gimmick not working (especially the A.S.H. bit), Cross got her most success in WWE during this run, winning Money in the Bank and successfully cashing in on Raw Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair.
1 2022: Scrypts
Because NXT is WWE developmental, it’s sometimes unfair to prematurely write off certain gimmicks and performers, because the point of developmental is to evolve and improve. That being said, there hasn’t been an NXT gimmick that was so dead-on-arrival as that of Scrypts. After about a month of serious vignettes promoting a mystery figure out to seemingly destroy NXT, the masked Scripts debuted in late November 2022 looking like a CHIKARA wrestler without the production value who repeatedly pantomimed writing gestures into the air. Once fans realized that the man behind the mask was acrobatic comedy wrestler Reggie, it seemed like it was over for Scrypts.
