As part of a project for another wrestling forum, the Ring Wars Facebook Page, we were to name the 10 Greatest Wrestling Gimmicks of All-Time. For some, that might sound easy. But for The Man Who Goes Deeper, The Smartest Man Not In Professional Wrestling, that’s one tall order!
Immediately certain gimmicks come to mind, as they probably did for you when you read the title. But is that because the gimmicks themselves are truly “great,” or because the performers who played them took them farther than they probably should have gone?
The most obvious example is undoubtedly The Undertaker. We all know what he has become. But how many fans remember how he started? The original concept was literally an undead Undertaker with supernatural powers who was nearly impervious to pain.
The WWF, in 1990 when The Undertaker debuted, was hardly the first wrestling promotion to entertain such a ludicrous idea. And certainly, wrestling in all its inherent campiness would seem to lend itself perfectly for such a gimmick to not only be accepted, but even thrive.
But if you take the gimmick at face value, a supernatural undead undertaker who is nearly invincible and possessing of magical powers, it does beg the question, Why the hell is he wrestling?? You would think a being with that kind of power at his disposal might have loftier ambitions than the WWF Championship. In fact, so preposterous was this gimmick that it was one of the reasons I quit watching wrestling for awhile as a thirteen year-old with maturing tastes.
I became a wrestling fan in the mid 80s, when even in the WWF’s “circus” the gimmicks still built upon the basic premise of competition. Even the most far-fetched personas still clung to this ideal of beating your opponent and achieving success inside the ring.
The Undertaker gimmick certainly wasn’t the first to pop up in the WWF that turned me off. Clownish gimmicks like The Bushwackers had already started that. But shortly after The Undertaker debuted you had Papa Shango followed by others.
Some might argue that these gimmicks made money and that’s all that matters. And normally I would agree with that. But I just can’t bring myself to call something “great” when at its core, it just doesn’t make sense.
Now I realize a fan would have to be stupid not to acknowledge The Undertaker’s accomplishments. And since coming back to watching wrestling regularly, I’ve seen a couple of different incarnations of The Undertaker gimmick and multiple storylines, and when considering the subject of greatest gimmick ever, I had to ask myself whether I have ever actually cared about the gimmick or whether it was always the wrestler?
And as my man Jack Tunney might put it, after intense deliberation, I have determined that the appeal of The Undertaker for me has been nothing more than the basics of Wrestling 101, a superior athlete, a good wrestler, and a well-told story involving good versus evil.
The actual gimmick itself is just plain stupid.
So why is The Undertaker always mentioned whenever fans start talking about the greatest gimmicks of all time? I think it’s because it’s just one of the most “gimmicky” gimmicks and has been so successful for so long that it’s easy to attribute that success to the gimmick.
And that’s where I differ from most fans. I’m not so quick to declare greatness except upon those to whom it is due. The wrestler Mark Callaway deserves to go down in history as one of the greatest of all time. The gimmick of The Undertaker deserves a place in the history books as well. Not as one of wrestling’s greatest gimmicks but rather one of wrestling’s most well-polished turds of all-time.
And that is the last word.
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