FanPost

The Fandango Syndrome/Gimmicks in the WWE

As I write this fanpost the newest member to the current WWE roster, Fandango, is getting over in a way I thought might not be possible in this day and age. As we all know his gimmick is that of a ballroom dancer and his catchphrase(for lack of a better term) is making his opponent pronounce his name the right way. Pretty simple...yet effective. I have to admit that at first I was quite skeptical about the gimmick, but after seeing him at WM against Jericho I turned into a believer. That being said, should full-on gimmicks make a return as a staple of wrestling? Gimmicks like "The Honky Tonk Man", "George The Animal Steele", hell even "The Ultimate Warrior" were all gimmicks that got over big time. Think about it, even Hulk Hogan was a gimmick- a real american hero who was billed as invincible basically. And he was what some may call the greatest of all time period.As wrestling made its progression towards the "Attitude Era" or more specifically towards a more reality based product, we saw the petering out of gimmicks almost completely. A few exceptions come to mind like "Disco Inferno" from WCW or "The Godfather" and "Val venis". But for the most part full-on gimmicks have essentially went by the wayside. I can understand that the fear with gimmicks is that they may fail miserably( Red Rooster, Shockmaster I'm looking at you). Yet sometimes gimmicks you thought would never get over....DO. Case in point Doink the Clown. I mean c'mon a sinister clown who hits people with prosthetic limbs? Yet somehow that gimmick worked, and worked well enough in fact, that the character of Doink the Clown is used still to this day as a comedy act in many wrestling promotions. One more case reference is Goldust. This may even be the ultimate "can't believe it worked" scenario. An androgynous wrestler who spouts lines from movies and uses homophobia to psyche out his opponents. But guess what? It worked and Goldust became a 2-time IC champion as well as one of the most memorable gimmicks of all time.Really you could even include The Undertaker as a gimmick that became something even more, a legend perhaps.Wrestling was built on the gimmick, it was the personas that wrestlers adopted that made feuds interesting. I do believe that having wrestlers channel more of their real-life personalities helped bring us some of the best moments in wrestling history with the AE and NWO. But I believe even more that gimmicks- when done the right way or even by happenstance- have more of an impact on pro wrestling and maybe, just maybe, we will start to see more of them trickle down into the scene once more. What do you think Cagesiders? Am I right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle?


The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Cageside Seats readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cageside Seats editors or staff.