Prior to his professional wrestling career, Tony Atlas was a successful bodybuilder, winning
the title of “Mr. USA.”
He adopted the Mr USA title into his wrestling gimmick and went on to win the WWF world tag
team championships alongside Rocky Johnson becoming the company’s first black champions.
But after missing shows because of a drug addiction, he was released by the WWF until
they brought him back years later as Saba Simba, a Ugandan tribe warrior.
The gimmick itself had many racial connotations…
...but Atlas himself credits the gimmick for saving his life as he was homeless at the time.
Papa Shango was a voodoo practitioner reminiscent of Baron Samedi from the Haitian Vodou folklore.
He used black magic to place curses on his opponents.
But the mystique of Papa Shango didn’t last long once the losses started coming in.
Enter The Godfather…
The Godfather and his “hoes” were hugely popular with the crowd.
I mean who didn’t want to board the “Ho-Train…”
But as times changed so did The Godfather.
Unsurprisingly, the WWE transitioned away from the gimmick.
Viscera coined the nickname the “World’s Largest Love Machine” due to his overtly
sexual mannerisms and his many attempts to seduce women most notably Lilian Garcia...
Unsurprisingly, the
gimmick didn’t last long and he just found himself on the end of many roasts…
Viscera was repackaged and sent to ECW as Big Daddy V, a monster heel managed by Matt Striker.
He basically went from “bumming his opponents” to being hired muscle for Matt Striker.
Despite Cody Rhodes hating the Stardust gimmick, he played it incredibly well.
The idea behind Stardust was that Cody had lost his mind to the point where he transformed
into a bizarre Goldust look-a-like.
But after Cody’s request wanting to end the Stardust gimmick went ignored, he would
end up leaving the WWE.
He used this resentment and founded AEW, WWE’s biggest rival promotion since WCW.
Nobody ever thought that he would jump ship back to the WWE because of this but he did.
He signed having just one request…
Never to bring up Stardust again…
Elias entertained the WWE universe with his many musical performances whether the crowd
was with him or against him.
His gimmick was very over in the WWE which made sense considering what WWE stood for…
But after burning his guitar and declaring that Elias is dead, he would make a surprise
return 8 months later as Ezekiel, the “supposed” younger brother of Elias.
Come to think of it, Ezekiel sure does look familiar...