Good Gimmick, Bad Gimmick

We all know that the right gimmick can make a wrestler. Hulk Hogan’s all American superman gimmick made him the icon of a generation and the terrible gulf between his wholesome in ring persona and his actual venal and self-serving nature is a potent illustration of how gimmicks help a wrestler get over with the crowd. 

 Hogan was a champion in a simpler, more racist time.

In this occasional series I want to take a look at some of the many factors that go into a good gimmick and how we can contrast those with gimmicks that have failed to take off and, in some cases, consigned talented workers to jobber status for big chunks of their career. I’m going to start with two WWE wrestlers with over the top gimmicks who have yet to make it to the big time; Tyler Breeze and Fandango. I’m hoping to illustrate that even relatively early in a performer’s tenure with the company you can distinguish between gimmicks that will go over and gimmicks that will become obscure future trivia questions.

Good Gimmick

Tyler Breeze is variously nicknamed “Prince Pretty” and “The King of Cuteville”. He comes to the ring in flamboyant ring attire and carrying a phone on a matching selfie stick which he uses to take preening photos of himself as he makes his way to the ring. On entering the ring he drapes himself across the top turnbuckle and continues to ignore the crowd, completely focused on his own good looks. The footage from his phone, in all its self-absorbed glory, is screened on the titantrons so that the crowd can see his various facial expressions and appreciate just how well he has plucked his eyebrows. Breeze’s gimmick is simple; he is a narcissist who thinks he’s a model.

 Tyler Breeze strikes a pose on the ring apron

Tyler Breeze’s gimmick is good for a number of reasons. It’s a natural fit with his heel persona - not least because he’s very good looking. Handsome men have traditionally tended to be heels because their very appearance tends to threaten the self-esteem of the male members of audience (and there’s a whole other article in that messed up dynamic). His gimmick also succeeds because it is largely based on his personality traits. You see him enter the stadium and it’s instantly clear that this is a man with no regard for the crowd, his opponent, the officials or anything other than himself. It’s no stretch to imagine him taking shortcuts to win a match, it would be more shocking if he didn’t. This gimmick isn’t new, Shawn Michaels, ‘Dashing’ Cody Rhodes and ‘The Narcissist’ Lex Luger have also used versions of the gimmick in the past. What Tyler Breeze has done is bring it bang up to date by adding a modern prop in the selfie stick. All right thinking people hate selfies and the selfie stick is a great tool to make a character come across as a complete prick.

Perhaps the most important thing that Tyler Breeze has going for him is that his gimmick is not static, it gives him space to grow and develop his character. he has room to try new things. He can add some comedy to his act, after all people love to see self-important people fall on their ass. If he wants to take it in a darker direction they can explore some of the character traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder. His introductory feud with Dolph Ziggler might be a good place to try this out, Dolph is also handsome, skilled in the ring, and over with the crowd and Breeze might be willing to go to extreme lengths to try to humble him. If the crowd warms to Tyler Breeze, and there is no predicting what the audience will do, there is also the possibility of allowing more of his actual character to come out gradually over time and form the basis of a face turn similar to how Ziggler himself took his brash, cocky heel persona and softened it into an underdog face character.

Tyler Breeze admires himself with his selfie stick after laying out Hideo Itami

If Tyler Breeze doesn’t get stuck in a rut replicating the same schtick every week  and his in-ring performances become more consistently top tier then there’s every reason to believe that this young man from Canada may have a bright future ahead of him. His fun and current gimmick should help him along the way.

Bad Gimmick

Fandango’s gimmick is that he is a dancer. He comes out to the ring with a dance partner, cuts some moves, reminds everyone how to say his name and then jobs to whichever mid-carder happens to be passing. Is Fandango currently a face? Is Fandango currently a heel? More to the point does anybody care? Fandango is a great example of how a terrible gimmick can really stitch up a talented wrestler. It’s the sort of gimmick that you hold up to wrestlers working on the indies as a cautionary tale of how wrong things can go even if you achieve your dream of working in the industry’s number one promotion.

Fandango hits a dancer's pose as the crowd tries and fails to care

Fandango has a terrible gimmick because it tells us what he does not who he is, we know he can dance but we don’t have the first idea why he thinks that this is necessary on his way to a wrestling ring. The wrestler with a job gimmick is a notoriously hard one to get over and after a very brief period where Fandango’s ballroom dancer entrance went viral because it was quite fun to sing along with his entrance theme the crowds quickly lost interest. After the novelty wore off it became obvious that his character had less depth than a pothole and he vanished off television for a time. When he came back he had a shiny new gimmick; he had swapped ballroom dancing for salsa dancing. The crowd embraced this exciting change with a riot of apathy.

It doesn’t help that when he was introduced the audience already remembered him wrestling under another name which made it very clear that he wasn’t an actual ballroom dancer. It’s a massive challenge for a wrestler to get over when the artifice is so clear. A crowd that will swallow the huge lie that a leg drop is a match ending move will tend to choke on the smaller lie that a wrestler used to be a ballroom dancer. Lastly, but by no means least, Fandango isn’t much of a dancer which is a problem when this is your entire gimmick.

Fandango prepares to remind people how to say his name.

It’s not clear how Fandango’s character could develop as he literally doesn’t have a personality. I guess he could dance more, or maybe less? Even if they went back to the drawing board and gave him a whole new persona the audience would likely remember Fandango and taunt him with his original entrance music the same way that they used to chant ‘Goldberg’ at Ryback. He’s trapped by his own ridiculous gimmick, forever destined to be remembered as that guy who danced on his way to the ring and somehow once beat Chris Jericho clean at Wrestlemania.

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