Can we be honest with each other? Professional wrestling can be extremely dumb at times. It’s staged fights, promoted by carnival barkers, where dudes use razors to slice themselves open to bleed. It's at times been centered around juvenile storylines like sex, money and power and is reviled by high society types and others with clout and authority. Don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff. If I changed my name, Mark Jobbers would likely be an option, but with that being said, I know that a lot of professional wrestling is lowest common denominator sort of stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a billion-dollar industry so who am I to judge?
As such, fans have been subjected to some pretty terrible characters over the years. I think any card-carrying member of the IWC will agree that Vince McMahon likes his show high on muscles and low on IQ.
Think about how many stupid angles and characters we’ve been subjected to because the boss finds the most inane things entertaining. The perfect writers in Mr. McMahon’s eyes probably spent time at MAD Magazine.
But Vinny Mac isn’t the only promoter who came up with some terrible ideas. Here’s a look at the 15 stupidest wrestling characters of all-time.
15 15. Kerwin White
I imagine that this is how the creative meeting went with Vince McMahon saying, “Let’s take one of the Guerreros and make him a white guy.” Chavo Jr was then deemed Kerwin White and one of the stupidest characters ever was born. White ripped Hispanics, rode a golf cart and wore khakis & sweaters the classic hallmarks of a stereotypical white schmuck in middle class America. His catch phrase, “If it’s not white, it’s not right” sounds like the motto of a white supremacy group.
There was a feud with Shelton Benjamin but Kerwin lost their big match at Unforgiven 2005. Amazingly, White wrestled in 38 matches and won 24 of them. The cringe-worthy character did bring us one good thing though and that was his caddy Nick Nemeth who today goes by the name Dolph Ziggler. The pair teamed up on a few occasions, but the death of Chavo’s uncle Eddie in November 2005 led to the character being abandoned.
14 14. The Goon
What do you get when you give a pro wrestler a hockey jersey, gloves and a stick? You get the Goon, a character that luckily only lasted a dozen or so matches in the WWF and tallied two wins. I feel bad for the guys that had to job to this character. The high spot for The Goon wasn’t when he was defeated by The Undertaker, but likely when he was part of a gimmick battle royals at WrestleMania X-Seven and the Raw 15th Anniversary Show. Shockingly, he wasn’t a major contender in either match.
You know, now that I think of it, seeing as how big a fan of ice hockey CM Punk is, I’m surprised he never made an appearance as a Goon-like character during his run. Yeah, I take that back. The Goon character should stay locked away in whatever vault it’s kept in. It was quite unimaginative.
13 13. Max Moon
A character so lame they had two different guys portray it! A Tron ripoff, Max Moon looked like something out of a Mega Man video game. The story is that Konnan came up with the character and the WWE poured thousands of dollars into a ridiculous costume and ring-gear for it. His run was so short that it doesn’t even come up on websites that list match statistics. Konnan played the Moon character for a handful of matches before leaving the company. But when you spend a pile of money on something like this, you don’t just abandon the character right away, you give it to a guy like Paul Diamond, who also wrestled as a “Japanese” man under a mask in the Orient Express. Diamond had 77 matches as Max Moon before the character was put out to pasture in 1993. The biggest of those matches was an Intercontinental Title match versus Shawn Michaels on the first Monday Night Raw. He lost.
12 12. Duke "The Dumpster" Droese
Seriously, a garbage man? That’s a freaking wrestling gimmick? Yes, there have been plenty of terrible characters in professional wrestling, but the lack of creativity in which the idea of a garbage man is floated out there is just plain dumb. It’s gimmicks like this that kept me watching WCW and uninterested in WWE. Even worse, this guy had a boatload of wins during his WWE run from 1994-96. From his first match in April '94 until July, Droese was undefeated, a streak of 26 wins. Nearly Goldbergesque! After losing to Jerry the King Lawler, Owen Hart and Diesel, Droese went back to working lower card matches.
His final match was a win over Leif Cassidy (or Al Snow for those keeping score), but he did come back for the gimmick battle royal at WrestleMania X-Seven. He didn’t play into the final decision and was eliminated by Doink the Clown, a quality character.
11 11. Hugh Morrus
I will tell you right now that I’m no fan of Kevin Sullivan and I find his Dungeon of Doom faction to be the epitome of job squad. Z-Gangsta? The Yeti and Loch Ness?! Get out of here with that trash. Sure, there were some solid members like the Giant and Meng, but the majority of these guys are straight up garbage.
One of those guys was Hugh Morrus. He wore question marks on his tights and laughed. That was the gimmick. See why it was so stupid? I think that Bill DeMott had some solid in-ring ability and was able to demonstrate that later in his career, but the Hugh Morrus gimmick was not good. Outside of being the first wrestler that Bill Goldberg pinned during his legendary undefeated streak (he went on to lose to Goldberg two more times), Morrus was a forgettable part of the WCW roster.
10 10. Isaac Yankem
What a stupid character this was. Imagine Kane as a dentist and there you have it! Even more ridiculous was the fact that Yankem, again a DENTIST character, had a mouth full of gnarly teeth. Why in the world would anyone think a wrestling dentist would get over in any way, good or bad? No wonder the WWE was on its last legs in the mid-90s getting crushed by WCW. As terrible as the Yankem character was on paper, in the ring he was nearly as bad. He lost 82 of his 107 matches, his final one on television being a defeat at the hands of the Ultimate Warrior in 1996.
Yankem’s character was later dropped and Glenn Jacobs took on another persona, which may be even dumber than the dentist, the new Diesel. Now that I think about it, give me the dentist over the fake any day of the week.
9 9. Glacier
Can you imagine Buddy Rogers dressed up like Guile from Street Fighter or Harley Race as He-Man. Who in their right minds thought a real-life Mortal Kombat character would take off in wrestling? And consider that he debuted in WCW where it was all about guys fighting, not the WWE where nothing was like reality and characters were everywhere. Sure, that kinda stuff works in Japan, but you don’t see a lot of characters from other genres taking off in American pro wrestling. Okay, so the Crow character was lifted from a comic book and served Sting well, but I say for every Sting, there’s a KISS Demon out there to prove me right.
To make things worse, Glacier had a feud with Mortis, who was another Mortal Kombat-like character. It was stupid. Somehow Glacier amassed 78 wins during his WCW career (out of 115 matches) and 43 in his first 44. Seriously.
8 8. The Repo Man
Barry Darsow has been around the block a few times. He was one of the Russians (Krusher Khruschev) in the mid-80s NWA. He was later Smash, one half of Demolition. That team holds the longest reign in WWE World Tag Team Championship history. It was after that though that things took a turn for the worse. Easily one of the dumbest ideas anyone ever came up with, Darsow was repackaged as the Repo Man, a guy in a trench coat and mask who goes around taking stuff from people who fail to pay their bills. Or at least that was the gimmick and in vignettes he would repossess cars and even a kid’s bike.
Repo was no small dude at 6’2” and nearly 300 pounds and was a sneaky heel who would do anything to win. In one match against the British Bulldog, Darsow tied up and hung Davey Boy Smith from the ropes causing a disqualification. While the character was mildly entertaining, it was really stupid.
7 7. Captain New Japan
Every time this goofy-looking tub of goo shows up on my screen I groan. I can’t think of another character in wrestling today who I despise more than Captain New Japan. The costume looks absurd (especially the camouflage version) his wrestling isn’t great and he’s far from being in the best of shape. Sure, I don’t speak Japanese, but I’m willing to bet that the Captain wouldn’t blow me away with his mic skills either. Seriously, what is the purpose of this guy?
What makes me even more upset is that he gets teamed up with solid wrestlers who could be in other feuds. I’ve seen him team up with Jushin Liger, Kushida, Tanahashi and others and there’s no reason for that. He should be teaming with young lions trying to get on the card. He’s got those stupid lightning bolts on his head, UGH! I am getting annoyed just typing about this guy!
6 6. Hacksaw Jim Duggan
I know I might catch some heat for this, but the Hacksaw character was just so incredibly dumb. He comes to the ring with a piece of wood, gives everyone a thumbs up and yells “HOOOOOOOO” like some sort of patient who escaped from the local mental hospital. Duggan may have been a fine wrestler earlier in his career, but his run in the WWE and especially later in WCW did nothing for me. Even when they gave him the American flag and had him parade around, there was nothing to it. No depth. Why should I care about this guy? Because he’s a regular schmo?! I want to see more from my wrestling and entertainment. A Hacksaw match signified a bathroom break or a chance to grab something to eat. Of course as you likely know, Hacksaw is still running around today yelling HOOOOOOOO and annoying me to no end.
5 5. Zeus
Zeus was born from the Hulk Hogan movie No Holds Barred and he should have stayed there. Instead Vince McMahon, likely in an effort to boost box office receipts, brought Zeus to the WWE to feud with Hogan. It was the late-80s and kayfabe was alive and well so why wouldn’t people believe the guy in the movie was really going after Hogan? One of the big problems though was that Zeus was an actor, not a wrestler. That was very easy to see any time Zeus entered a ring. Luckily for the fans, the feud and character were soon gone, but Zeus did have some high-profile matches. He wrestled three times for the WWE at SummerSlam, Survivor Series and a No Holds Barred pay-per-view event. There are plenty of guys who don’t get to wrestle at any pay-per-views, let alone three. Zeus, going by Z-Gangsta, also made an appearance for WCW in 1996.
4 4. Gobbledy Gooker
For the younger fans out there, you may not be aware of the Gobbledy Gooker’s debut which was one of those epic fails that was so bad it was awesome. The WWE had an egg on display at shows and on TV for a weeks leading up to a big reveal planned for Survivor Series 1990. WWF had egg on their face when this all went down as the idea sank like a stone. Watch the video and tell me that Mean Gene Okerlund, who was tasked with interviewing this disaster, didn’t want any part of it. It’s a shame in a sense that one of the Guerrero brothers (Hector) was stuck with this gimmick. Sure, it got him some work with the WWE, but that was basically the extent of his run with the company. The character was revived twice, the most recent instance being portrayed by Jey Uso on a 2015 episode of SmackDown.
3 3. Mantaur
If you’re coming to the ring wearing a giant, stuffed animal head, I’m pretty sure the character doesn’t stand much of a chance of becoming anything. Mantaur was a play on the mythological Minotaur that was the body of a man and the head of a bull. This goon with a ridiculous looking bull head had 41 matches and won 16 of them against guys like Barry Horowitz, Aldo Montoya and Buck Quatermaine. Who even knew that the last guy was a wrestler?! His biggest match came against Bret Hart in April 1995. I have no clue why Hart would ever be put in a match with this jabroni. If you put money on Mantaur losing, you win. Mantaur’s final match for the WWE was a house show against Bam Bam Bigelow. I like to think that it was a total squash and that the Bigelow took the head and tore it to pieces afterwards.
2 2. Beaver Cleavage
Creepy and stupid. That’s basically how to sum up Beaver Cleavage who had his “mother” as his valet in promos that were quite awkward. He was a wholesome, giant child who sometimes wore a propeller hat and said some creepy thing. I can’t understand why anyone would find this entertaining, but of course, we’re talking about the ultimate carnival barker, Vince McMahon, who was for some reason obsessed with incest storylines. The powers that be knew how strange the character was and kept him off Smackdown, which was shown on network television. Not the type of place where a storyline like this will fly.
Seriously, McMahon will do just about anything to try and make a buck. Beaver had one win (against Christian of all people) and that was the end of the angle. The former Headbanger Mosh said no more during a worked shoot promo that ended Cleavage’s run.
1 1. The Shockmaster
This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning this character from the early 90s. His debut is so epic, that it’s the only reason anyone cares about the character. It’s the most epic fail in the history of pro wrestling and it was awesome. Fred Ottman, the man behind the Shockmaster’s glittery Storm Trooper mask, was also Tugboat and later Typhoon which were two ridiculously dumb characters on their own. His terrible voice (dubbed by Ole Anderson), the fur coat, the impending fall, it was all glorious. You can hear the other wrestlers laughing during the Shockmaster’s debut and they have no idea what to do when he falls flat on his face. But let’s be honest, even if the Shockmaster debuted without a hitch, was that character going to take off? I say there’s no chance and without the failure of an entrance, nobody would have every remembered this guy.