We’ve all done it before. You walk into a room, maybe it’s at school or a party or bar mitzvah or whatever… and you see your crush or maybe a group of new people you’re trying to impress. You smile and attempt a cool strut over to them only to trip and knock over the hostess. She, of course, spills her champaign all over her prize-winning Scottish fold. The cat, deathly afraid of liquids, darts across the room and knocks over the hors-d’oeuvre table. The tablecloth, then, catches fire and the next thing you know you’re standing on the front lawn while firefighters make s’mores in smoldering remains of your host’s home. We’ve all been there.
That’s it. You’ve blown it. But what would you give for a second chance at a first impression? How much worse is it for wrestlers, making their television debut, to completely bomb? Would we have ever taken Konnan seriously had he remained Max Moon? Luckily, wrestlers sometimes get the chance to make a new first impression with the fans in what is delicately referred to as “repackaging.” Sure sometimes, this fails equally bad, like William Regal trying to play the Brawny Papertowel guy or basically every gimmick Matt Bloom ever had. But sometimes repackaging a wrestler can send them to heights that were never possible in their initial iteration.
Could you imagine the Brothers of Destruction with the Undertaker and the Christmas Creature? That’s not a world I want to live in. Thank the maker these men had another go or Steve Austin would have flamed out in the mid-card as the Ringmaster. In that spirit, this week on the High 5 we’re counting down the Top 5 Repackaged Wrestlers of all time.
Honorable Mentions:
Luke Gallows from Festus/Fake Kane
Al Snow from Lief Cassidy
5. Husky Harris => Bray Wyatt
Who in the blue hell thought Husky Harris was a good gimmick?! Husky is not a name you saddle a fat guy with. The only people who use that word are your moms when they’re trying to get their kid to stop crying after his fat ass was teased on the playground (as a fat person I can make these jokes). All that word brings to mind is the special fat-kid jeans my mom used to have to buy me, and not a world champion.
This had to be a rib on the Rotunda family. Luckily, it didn’t make its way onto the main roster. Thank whatever God you will that Windham Rotunda sat down with Dan Spivey on that fateful day and created the character of Bray Wyatt. I say create but I really mean make a copy of a copy that was better than the first copy. You follow? Me neither, but let’s take it slow.
Dan Spivey played a super creepy character in the 90’s called Waylon Mercy who was based on the Hawaiian shirt wearing psychopath, Max Cady, played by Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear. Waylon would deliver creepy, vaguely misanthropic sermons while wearing white pants and a Hawaiian shirt. Sound familiar? Bray may not be 100% original, but he’s reached heights Spivey never did in the WWE.
Also, Bray is a master at ad-libbing on the mic, a talent that works perfectly for his deranged, backwoods preacher persona. Since his rebirth under Sister Abigail, Wyatt has led a coterie of monsters on a devastating tear through the company and even captured, albeit briefly, the WWE Championship.
4. Dustin Runnels => Goldust
https://youtu.be/B32V694fPeY
Maybe it was desperation at an opportunity but I don’t think that was it. Dustin Runnels is a wrestling legacy and an amazing talent in his own right. I’ll go a step further. Dustin is arguably the best wrestler in the Runnels family. So, he didn’t have to take the “androgynous” character of Goldust, he could have turned it down because his name gave him options. Even if he was motivated by distancing himself from his father, taking up the mantle of the ‘Bizarre One’ in the mid-90’s was flat out brave.
Championing gender equality and challenging gender norms is much in vogue at the moment. However, this certainly wasn’t the necessarily the case in 1995. While those of us in the 90’s thought we were open-minded, we were certainly not PC and much of what we did and said would be quite inflammatory now. Just go listen to any ECW crowd and you’ll understand what we were getting away with.
Goldust though, came into the heart of our wrestling ring and challenged our concepts on masculinity, sexuality, and the correlation between being macho and being tough. We thought he was a “sissy” but how could someone we derided as weak stand toe-to-toe with the Undertaker. Today, people are very concerned with finding a label for themselves and a category to belong to. Goldust wasn’t gay or straight… maybe trans… but he was nothing and everything. Kinda like Dean Pelton on Community.
So, let me impart to those of you struggling to find your identity and thinking an obscure label will help with the wisdom Goldie taught me. Gender is a concept better suited to language than people (i.e. masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, etc.). Sexuality is a sliding scale and no person is the same as another. You don’t need a label. Just be you.
3. Stardust => ‘The American Nightmare’ Cody Rhodes
I liked Stardust and Goldust together. It was fun watching the two brothers chew the scenery around them everytime they cut a promo. However, Stardust struggled to ever be more than a parody of Goldust, yet had none of the things that made Goldust an iconic character. There was no sexual ambiguity that challenged gender norms, no real psychological warfare with his opponents. It was just Cody in paint doing a terrible Chris Latta impersonation.
Since leaving WWE, Cody has reached heights he never would have seen buried in the mid-card on Monday nights. If he was still in WWE we’d probably only see him backstage standing around like a member of the Ascension. Instead, Cody has won gold in several promotions including Ring of Honor. He’s joined the Bullet Club and even challenged Kenny Omega as leader of the group, starting a civil war within the faction.
https://youtu.be/Vgkcp4mwJG4
Then, to top it all off, Cody met Uncle Dave’s challenge and is putting on the All In PPV proving the smaller promotions can draw 10,000 fans. Rhodes is on top of the wrestling world and what’s more is he’s doing it without the WWE. Cody has shown you don’t need Vinny Mac to succeed and thrive in this business. Just once though I’d like to see him come to the ring to “American Nightmare” by the Misfits. They’re huge in Japan.
2. The Christmas Creature, Fake Diesel, & Isaac Yankem, DDS. => Kane
Glenn Jacobs has had more second chances than Ryan Reynolds in superhero movies (Hannibal King, crappy Deadpool, & Hal Jordan). Like Reynolds finally playing a good Deadpool, eventually, Jacobs would find his place as Kane. But what a crapfest the poor man went through to get there. I mean how the hell does someone that big let another person wrap them in tinsel and convince them to wrestle in it?
Can you imagine his relief at getting signed to the WWE and thinking stupid characters like the Christmas Creature were in his past? Oh… you poor, poor man. Glenn’s “big break” was to go out and impersonate someone who could barely wrestle in an angle that did little more than piss off the audience. Fake Diesel was dead in the water, but Kane suffered through like the little demonic trooper he is. Was he rewarded with something brilliant? No, he was given a passé, wrestler-with-a-day-job gimmick. It wasn’t even a good one job trashman or racecar driver. Instead, he was cosplaying as Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors on HGH.
Jacobs paid his dues over and over but was finally rewarded with one of the most memorable characters of the last three eras. Kane has inspired fear, sympathy, outrage, and even laughter. Even now, over 20 years later, hitting the ring post pyro (when they can afford it) can still give you goosebumps.
1. Hunter Hearst Helmsley => Triple H
You may be scratching your head on this one, especially since he’s in the number one spot. I can already hear you’re 14-year-old voice cracking in anger as you scream that I’m an idiot because Triple H stands for Hunter Hearst Helmsley, he never changed characters! Well calm down and go to your safe place while I proffer my arguments.
Helmsley is not the ‘Game’. Anyone who watched his evolution from blue blood to bad boy knows this. Helmsley was a McMahon creation and damn good one. However, when Trips left that persona behind and joined with Shawn Michaels the difference was night and day. He was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Deadbeat-Biker-Uncle-Who-Lets-You-Drink-Underage-and-Leaves-Hustlers-Out-on-the-Coffee-Table.
Trips always said that the WWE needed a Darth Vader and that was what he evolved into. Ruling from the top, the ‘King of Kings’ earned his moniker. He went from being the only person punished for the Curtain Call because he was so low on the totem pole, to practically running the company with his wife. It’s funny that when he stopped acting like an aristocrat he became wrestling royalty. Few people have done as much for the company, nor care as much for the talent. Trips deserves his place on top and probably never would have seen it as the Connecticut Blue Blood.
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That’s it for the High 5 this week. Who are your favorite repackaged wrestlers? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter here. You can also join us on Discord to chat with Oli, Luke, the magazine team, the website writers and each other here!
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