Hardcore Holly was a no-nonsense brawler who just loved to beat people up…
and that was pretty much it as he had no real gimmick as such.
So, WWE management attempted to boldly reinvent his character as an astronaut who worked for NASA
by the name of “Spacecore Holly”. But that was not all, as they even pitched for him to
wrestle in a space suit and have a monkey sidekick who’d accompany him to the ring.
As bizarre as all this sounded, it even got the stage where artwork was produced
but luckily for Holly, that’s as far as the idea reached.
“No flips, just fists” was what The Revival was all about. In NXT, they became the first-ever
two-time NXT Tag Team champions as well as the first-ever Tag Team Triple Crown
Champions after winning the RAW and SmackDown Tag Team championships in the main roster.
However, in early 2019, The Revival increasingly became unhappy with “the direction of tag team
wrestling” resulting in the pair wanting out of their WWE contracts. This led to them being
“punished” in various segments with The Usos where they were made out to be complete clowns.
Speaking of clowns, Vince McMahon even pitched a ludicrous idea for The Revival to be some
sort of court jesters… I don’t even know… with bowties, glowsticks and lipstick. Thankfully,
The Revival got out of their WWE contracts in time before any more damage could be done.
When Neville joined the WWE, he was like a real-life superhero;
his high-flying style and aerial prowess earned him the nickname: “The Man That Gravity Forgot”.
However, due to his short stature and look,
the WWE had other ideas for him. In the 1940s and 50s, there was a cartoon superhero known as
“Mighty Mouse” and that’s essentially what the WWE wanted Neville’s gimmick to be… a superhero mouse.
We can all hazard a guess to whose bright idea that was…
When Lars Sullivan first arrived in the WWE, he was pushed as an enraged and unstoppable monster,
or as Michael Cole liked to say: “a freak”.
However, before he made his main roster debut, Sullivan’s past controversies caught up to him
as he was exposed for a slew of racist, sexist and homophobic posts on a bodybuilding forum,
which is pretty ironic as it was also discovered that he starred in a gay porno.
Sullivan was quietly released by the WWE in 2021 and shortly after his release,
he shared a concept design on his Instagram of an idea the WWE had for him: “The Brilliant Behemoth”
Lawrence Sullivan, complete with a bowler hat and a monocle. He almost looked like a villain
straight out of a Sherlock Holmes movie. Instead, he conducted shirtless interviews
with Michael Cole before his release. Maybe he was filming another gay porno…
Before Shawn Michaels became known as “The Heartbreak Kid”,
he nearly could have been known as something completely different.
Early WWE concept sketches showed that Michaels was originally supposed to be
some sort of biker character, all dressed in leather with the word
“Biker” on the back of his jacket… just to further emphasize what he was meant to be.
In short, Michaels almost became The American Badass character we saw with The Undertaker.
Michaels did go on to take some elements of the biker attire such as the leather jacket
and the biker’s cap but over time, that slowly evolved into more of a male stripper character…