When you’re starting out in the world of Sports Entertainment, Superstars need to have some sort of gimmick to catch the imaginations of the fans and get over. Some pitches work, but some fall flat faster than The Shockmaster. Some pitches don’t even make it out of the writer’s room.
Thankfully, fans still somehow catch wind of those ridiculous pitches. But it is comforting to know that as batty as many fans and critics think Vince McMahon and other promoters are over the years that they still never went these absurd ideas. For every Katie Vick or Ding Dongs, these ideas never passed the line of scrimmage.
10 Heidenreich - Baron Von Bava
Jon Heidenreich was a tremendous piece of man meat that Vince McMahon covets. Big and blond like the Hogans, Lesnars, and even Lugers of yesteryear. But for some reason, he was constantly saddled with ridiculous gimmicks that not even the most skilled wrestler could get over, let alone Heidenreich. But thankfully, the worst idea for big Jon thankfully never made air. An old writer, Dan Madigan had pitched that perhaps Heidenreich was an old Nazi Stormtrooper, Baron Von Bava. He was thawed out and being managed by Paul Heyman - a proud Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor.
9 Vince McMahon Fathered Stephanie’s Daughter
While creating a Nazi character might have crossed a tremendous line for Vince (who walked out of the room after the Heidenreich pitch), making the McMahons an incestuous family actually came right out of the chairman’s mouth.
When Stephanie was carrying her firstborn, Vince had actually pitched the proverbial “what if,” and thought maybe Vinnie Mac himself should have sired his own granddaughter. Even though plenty of people think Stephanie is like her father, she still was smart enough to turn that terrible idea down.
8 Bill Ding, The Evil Architect
To this day, Glenn Gilbertti gets a bad rap, thanks in no small part to the character he played throughout his WCW career, the Disco Inferno. But the man was actually pitch-perfect at playing his man-out-of-time gimmick. Of all people, Vince Russo saw something in Disco and asked him to help out with the WCW writing team. Whether he meant it as a joke or not is debatable, but Disco has also gotten a bad rap for his idea for The Evil Architect, Bill Ding.
7 Cowboy Bret Hart
While he eventually got to play one on TV in Lonesome Dove, Bret Hart will be the first person to admit that he is not a cowboy. But when he first started in WWE after coming over from his dad’s Stampede promotion, that was the big idea they had for the Hitman.
He’d head to the ring on a horse wearing chaps (he’d wear them, not the horse). Despite being new to the company, thankfully Bret had the courage to speak up for himself and turn down the idea.
6 The Blue Dot Special
Christian had and still has the respect of his peers and is generally regarded as one of the best wrestlers in the world. He just isn’t as visually appealing as his lifelong friend and tag team partner, Edge. Or at least Vince McMahon felt that way. He once bemoaned how ugly he thought Christian was and desired to cover his face with one of those black or blue dots they use in true crime documentaries to cover up the victim’s faces. While it might have been funny for a match or two, it also might have ruined Captain Charisma’s career.
5 “I Am Spartacus, Woo!”
The heck with the fact that already by the time Jim Herd had taken over WCW, The Nature Boy was already in the pantheon of greatest of all time. The pizza man wanted to shake things up and try to make Ric Flair look cooler to a younger audience while tying into the Turner Classic library. Meanwhile, Naitch was cool to all ages, just not Jim Herd. He tried to get Flair to chop off his trademark long hair, get an earring, and call himself Spartacus. His insistence on such nonsense caused Flair to finally make the leap to the WWE in late 1991.
4 Kennel From Hell Based On A Real Rib
If hanging the Big Boss Man from the Hell In The Cell wasn’t bad enough, how about putting him inside of one surrounding the blue bar cage with dogs surrounding the ring? Hands down, the Bossman was involved in two of the worst cell matches of all time. Unfortunately, it was also based on a real rib that happened involving Mr. Fuji feeding Jimmy Snuka a dog. Whether it happened or not, basing an entire angle around possibly killing a dog was in pretty poor taste.
3 The Ridiculous Revival
Slowly working their way through the ranks of NXT, The Revival's Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson had garnered the reputation of being the best tag team in all of the company. Clearly, the team was a throwback to the old school heel NWA tag teams like The Midnight Express and Arn and Tully. But not having a character doesn’t always work on the main roster. On their way to All Elite, they had been given a new pitch for characters. The Revival would have become hip hop clowns instead of being thought of as the best tag team in the industry.
2 Bedpan “The Man”
Stone Cold Steve Austin thumping Vince McMahon in his hospital room was amongst one of the great moments of The Attitude Era. It was also one that The Man, Becky Lynch had looked forward to possibly recreating, only with her in the hospital bed.
She reportedly had the idea while she was pregnant last year for someone to attack her in her hospital room. Thankfully no one took the idea further than just that. Even if the idea came from the pregnant wrestler, it still would have raised the ire of just about…well, everyone.
1 The Hunchbacks
Jim Herd and his ridiculous ideas strike again. This time, the former president of WCW thought it would be a good idea to have a tag team called The Hunchbacks. It was a simple but ineffective idea to have a team whose shoulders you couldn’t pin because of their affliction. Herd hasn’t accounted for smarter people as far as wrestling was concerned clueing him into silly things like countouts, disqualifications, and submission. Not to mention, it was just a silly idea to begin with.