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Retroactive Reconstruction, Part 5: Saving the Shockmaster

Welcome back to another edition of Retroactive Reconstruction. Here, we take apart abortive or not-quite-over gimmicks in order to analyze what went wrong, why it might have gone wrong, and what could be done for a future reconstruction. Today, we look at a man that hates walls the way doors hate MMA fighters.

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Last week, I attempted to reconstruct a gimmick that many said couldn't be done. I believed otherwise. Naturally, this went about as well as one would expect. Hold on a second...

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…God, the Yeti sucked.

And, admittedly, so too does this next gimmick. But upon further review, I don't think this gimmick sucked so much from the concept itself, but rather the legendarily and immortally bad beginning followed by a supremely lazy attempt to patch things up afterwards. And while if you were to reconstruct the Yeti you would end up with a gimmick that was completely different from its original incarntion, if you were to piece this one together you might end up with something that still resembles its initial push AND still make it work.

More on that last bit later.

I buried the lede here but I am, of course, talking about the immortal Shockmaster.

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…Okay, before we get on to the fixing of what was unfortunately doomed from the start, for old time's sake, let us throw back our heads and laugh.

Ready?

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BACKGROUND

Amazingly, the story of the Shockmaster comes before the immortal Hulk Hogan arrived to WCW and proceeded to make it a poor man's copy of the WWF's Rock N' Wrestling era (pre-nWo era, of course). This was 1993*, and we were only a year removed from the terror that was Jim Herd as the head of WCW. You'd think that this would definitely be the kind of thing that he'd have personally signed off on, but sadly that was not the case.

WCW was prepping for a big and fantastic four-on-four tag team match, with both the Face team and the Heel team being, shall we say, freaking stuffed with big-name WCW talent. On the Heel side, we had Sid Vicious, Big Van Vader, and Harlem Heat (Booker T and Stevie Ray). On the Face side, we had "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith, "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes, and "The Guy We Keep Thinking Is Signing with WWE" Sting.

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*Sigh*…He deserves so much better than that.

You'll notice that I only listed seven guys. That's because the fourth member of the baby face team, Road Warrior Hawk, had to be replaced. So WCW could either A.) draw from one of their lower-tier faces and possibly create an excellent four-on-four match that results in this lower-tier baby face showing his stuff and maybe getting over with the crowd, or B.) come up with something completely insane.

This is the company that had Sting get saved by Robocop. What do you think they did?

We get some buildup that there is going to be a "mystery partner," and finally Harlem Heat and Sid decided to confront Sting and Bulldog and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Let me just point out that this wasn't just a backstage segment like whenever Kurt Angle et al. came whining to the Commish Mick Foley (whose office strangely never seemed to stay in the same place) where in theory there was nobody around besides the wrestler and Foley: this was taking place during "A Flair for the Gold," which was a live interview segment hosted by Ric fuckin' Flair at Clash of the Champions XXIV. This is the kind of environment where you'd, to pardon my language, better get every single fucking step involved in what had better be a fucking electric debut exactly fucking right or else you are fucking screwed.

They give the microphone to Sting, who somehow managed to keep a straight face while saying these lines: "All I have to say is, our partner is going to 'shock' the world, because he is none other than…The Shockmaster!"

At which point, the camera turned to the wall, and we became witness to history.

WHY IT WAS AWESOME

In this regard, when I say it's awesome, we definitely speaking in an ironic sense here. Because what was awesome wasn't so much the moment itself, but rather the others' reactions to this terrible botch of an entrance.

You can hear Flair audibly exclaiming "Oh, God!" as if looking upon this pile of fail will somehow infect his own ability to be an excellent performer. As the Shockmaster (having been exposed as Fred "Tugboat/Typhoon" Ottman) put on his stormtrooper helmet and tried desperately to act like nothing was out of the ordinary, Booker T remarked "Who is this motherfucker?" My personal favorite is the reaction of Bulldog, who spoke for the people when he exclaimed "He fell flat on his arse…he fell flat on his fucking arse!"

Eventually, the Shockmaster gets back up, and starts speaking. But it isn't Tugboat speaking, because they evidently didn't trust his vocal chords to sound "intimidating" enough. So they give it to Ole Anderson backstage, who was reading a scripted promo. Scripted, as in, "He was acting as though this horrible error had not happened and everything was going on as planned." That is some impressive cognitive dissonance, almost matched by the booking team for WWE when they thought "Let's make CM Punk the heel and Jeff Hardy the face in a feud! No way that will look foolish on our part!"

So poor Ottman is waving his arms and gesturing like he thinks a menacing creature of lightning sounds, except we've all seen that he apparently has the depth perception of a drunken Irishman. And finally, most awesomely of all, the crowd did a complete 180 from the moment before and after the reveal of the Shockmaster. In the beginning, they were excited. I like to think that was because surfer-Sting was supremely over as a babyface in pre-Hogan WCW so that accounts for that. After the fall? Dead. Silence. Truly there is a God, because I could not have written a moment as unintentionally hilarious as that.

WHAT KILLED THE GIMMICK?

*Sigh*…there were a lot of things. I'm just gonna narrow it down to three major reasons for time's sake.

First, the legendary botched entrance.

See, this is why I've grown to love professional wrestling in the short few months that I've seriously cared about it: the stories and "shoots" of backstage politicking flying around makes each and every story, no matter how true it might be, carry an aura of myth and fantasy. Quick example on a tangent: There's a video on the internet of Raven and Tommy Dreamer discussing a rather fond memory of their time as tag team partners, and Dreamer spins a story that is funny, intricate, and best of all gives us a hilarious shot of Raven cracking up. Then you find the video of the actual moment they're telling the story about, and you see there were some…heavy liberties taken. All in the name of good fun, right?

Back to the Shockmaster.

Well, according to some people like Dusty Rhodes, apparently David Crockett thought that the Shockmaster was such a ludicrously stupid gimmick, such a painstaking attempt to make us all lose brain cells upon visual exposure, that he went so far as to nail a two-by-four into the wall so Ottman would trip over it, thus killing the gimmick. That takes some impressive dedication to killing something you think is stupid, but I doubt that's what really happened. I bet that there was a two-by-four on the wall, and Ottman did trip over it, but I bet it was just there and he couldn't see it because of that terrible mask.

Either way, that entrance single-handed ruined the gimmick. But there were plenty of things going for it that weren't exactly helping matters.

Second, whoever designed the Shockmaster's costume needs to be reassigned to a different branch. Preferably in Antarctica. I mean, they were seriously so cheap that they decided to go through with this?

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Ok, so we've clearly got a glittered-up Stormtrooper helmet up there, so that's veering on copyright infringement if this gimmick ever got over. Strike one. I don't know what the hell that thing is on his shoulders (is it a vest…cape? A vape?) Strike two. And naturally we've gone with fully exposing his stomach as well. No offense Tugboat, but strike three.

Third, after it was established that this gimmick had utterly failed, WCW went along and decided to kill the gimmick quickly and mercifully-I'm just kidding, of course they dragged it out for all that it was worth. They repackaged the Shockmaster as an oafish klutz, using a distorted version of the Beatles' "Day Tripper" as background music. (On a side note, don't you love how WCW cheated copyright infringement by messing with songs' frequencies? Go listen to DDP's old theme and tell me that that isn't just an instrumental of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on another pitch). Doesn't work when you tried so hard to establish him as a badass, guys! Then they went further by introducing the "Super Shockmaster" who was the nephew of the original Shockmaster, and who referred to the original Shockmaster as "Uncle Fred." Both characters were played by Ottman.

…Once again, was the booker in charge of this, by any chance, a five year old?

Ugh. Let's just move onto the saving part, which, contrary to what you might think, I believe is in fact possible.

RECONSTRUCTION

Ever heard of William Goldman?

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Author, playwright, novelist, professional picture-poser…so on.

He's been in Hollywood pretty much longer than any of us have been alive. He wrote the screenplay for All the President's Men, and wrote the book that eventually became one of the internet's most-beloved movies: The Princess Bride. We should all be thankful that this man is alive.

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As thankful as we are that this man is dead.

Anyway, Goldman is often attributed to the following quote:

"Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one."

The same concept applies to professional wrestling. Maybe we have an innate sense when a gimmick isn't going to work, but we don't really know when a gimmick is going to work. For a contemporary example, I remember when Bad New Barrett debuted. Not exactly the most spectacular of runs, and more than a few IWC fans in areas I hung around in griped that this was a waste of Barrett's talent. But then Barrett stuck to his guns, completely and totally lived his gimmick, and by golly he's the Intercontinental Champion again. Nobody knows anything.

For a more legendary example, here's this.

Looking at that objectively, should a seven-foot-tall zombie wrestler managed by a short and fat guy in mortician's makeup carrying a supernatural urn have ever gotten over? Probably not. But by golly it did, and thank God for that because Undertaker has had a greater impact on this business than any of us could possibly imagine. Nobody knows anything.

My point is this: The Shockmaster gimmick was killed by a terrible entrance, bad costuming, and poor planning. These are easily remedied problems, and if fixed could have given us something special.

First, the costuming. Drop the shitty Star Wars memorabilia, and strip down the stupidity. Make it a sleeker, more subtle costume. That might lead to the always entertaining "opponents underestimate outer appearance, proceed to get their shit wrecked" trope we all know and love in fiction. Maybe something like this?

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See, the outfit is low-key, but the powers are extraordinary.

Second, and playing off of that last point, really make the special effects worthwhile. Instead of pyros when he enters the ring, use those Tesla coils that make bitchin' music as his backdrop. Have him pull off a stunt or two like this every once and a while. Just go completely and totally whole-hog in his style as a master of lightning.

Also, drop the whole "have someone else speak for him." That's confusing and too difficult to work with. Find someone that is completely capable of cutting an electrifying promo (Sorry, Rock.), and let them go nuts. Either give him leeway to speak as much as he likes or don't speak whatsoever. So make sure you get someone who can talk with confidence. But if you only make him make shockingly bad puns, you deserve to get tasered by Scott Hall. But that's neither here nor there.

Next, as much as it pains me to say it, get someone who is in better shape than Ottman. Ottman is a good bruiser/big guy. The Shockmaster can be a wiry guy if need be.

Maybe tweak the name. Keep the electrical theme. Lightning? Static? I dunno, there's gotta be something that'll work and roll off the tongue easier than "The Shockmaster!"

Finally, the entrance...

…Take aside every other wrestler in the area, and tell them that you are going BIG. We're talking C4 to the inside of the wall, Michael Bay-level big explosion of an entrance. Give them enough of a distance so that they are safely out of range. Practice and rehearse in safety many, many times. If the explosives are a little bit too dangerous/expensive, you could always take a moment like this...

…and tailor it to the situation. Notice how there weren't any two-by-fours in his way to stop him?

There have been some silly gimmicks in professional wrestling, and I am sure that there will soon be others that I can mock incessantly while I try to save them in the aftermath. But as cheesy and as stupid and as terrible as this gimmick was, I do believe that it could have been saved if it had been given the right wrestler to work with, the proper planning, and more than a little bit of luck. As it stands, the Shockmaster will live on in infamy…as the second-worst gimmick in history according to Cagesiders.

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So what do you think Cagesiders? Do you agree that the Shockmaster could have been saved, and if so who would you give the gimmick to if anyone? As funny as it would be, let's leave the most electrifying man in sports entertainment out of the suggestions for now. In addition, if you have any gimmick suggestions for me to look at, drop a line in the comments section below. Tune in next time, where we look at a phenomenon in one company, a near also-ran in another. Who's next? You'll see...

For those of you who are just joining the series, here are the other entries:

1.) Bikertaker

2.) Muhammad Hassan

3.) Waylon Mercy

4.) The #$%@ing Yeti

*I find it humorous that I was born a few months after this abomination, as if to balance things out.

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