Character development. It’s one of those phrases you hear insiders discuss regarding ongoing professional wrestling angles and storylines, and it keeps things fresh by ensuring the same folks don’t just do the same things, the same way, week after week and month after month. At least that’s what GOOD character development does.
TODAY’S ISSUE: The evolution of characters and performers.
Watch an early episode of Seinfeld and you’ll clearly see that compared to the versions of the characters you’re used to from later shows, the original versions were still finding their voice and getting comfortable in their own roles back then. In the first episode, Jerry was unsure of himself and a tad whiny, Kramer was a Reverend Jim-type who hadn’t left the apartment building in 10 years, and George was the confident confidant of the title character. Just like these Seinfeld “gimmicksâ€, the early work of any character is shaky at best until they develop, work out some kinks, and sometimes completely change to create an entirely new persona.
Perhaps the best example of a wrestler growing and changing for the better before our eyes occurred when a timely injury sidelined rookie “sensation†Rocky Maivia, causing Dwayne Johnson to sit out for a while and reinvent himself as the ultra-cocky, third-person speaking egomaniac known as the Rock. Had he remained in the 1980s-ish babyface gimmick originally assigned to him in 1996, I doubt the IWC would even remember him today, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be a Hollywood leading man. It was his explosive attitude channeled into the Rock gimmick that catapulted Johnson to superstardom, and I’ll bet he thanks his body day in and day out for failing on him when it did back then, forcing the heel-turn and character development that turned his entire life around.
Speaking of the 1980s-ish babyface gimmick, Flyin’ Brian Pillman was about as generic and paint-by-numbers as a wrestler could be when he debuted on WCW Saturday Night in 1989. Sure, his incredible in-ring skills were revolutionary in the US scene at the time, but his character was nowhere. Thankfully he got a shot in 1992 to show a lot more personality and flair while teaming with Stunning Steve Austin as the Hollywood Blonds. This completely broke him out of the fan-loving, autograph-signing, smiling babyface mold and (eventually) launched he and Austin to bigger and better things. We’ll get back to Austin later, but in 1995 Pillman earned a coveted spot in the greatest heel stable of all time, the Four Horsemen, and as great a career highlight as that was, the best evolution for Pillman was yet to come.
That same year, Pillman started working everyone (including the boys) with his infamous “Loose Cannon†character and ‘Unpredictable’ became his new middle name. He seemed legitimately dangerous and insane, a scary combination for the bulldog from the Hart Family dungeon and veteran of not only Stampede Wrestling but also the NFL. He broke kayfabe consistently and performed multiple worked-shoots, breaking down the pro wrestling walls that had just started to crack at that point.
Pillman was so convincing in this new gimmick that he and WCW boss Eric Bischoff contrived a plan to release Pillman from his WCW contract and send him to ECW to get more legitimate heat on him, and then have Pillman return to WCW hotter than ever with the marks none the wiser.
But the Loose Cannon was smarter than Bischoff had anticipated, and when he got a real release from his WCW commitment, he did indeed stop into ECW for a few short months before jumping to WWF and establishing the Loose Cannon gimmick immediately, thanks in no small part to the legendary gun incident at Pillman’s house. Live on Monday Night RAW, Pillman’s former tag team partner Steve Austin, now in his Stone Cold gimmick, attempted to assault Pillman while the Loose Cannon brandished a gun in self-defense and apparently fired a few rounds at Austin (although not hitting the Rattlesnake), greatly enhancing the must-see TV element the WWF was aiming for and making a lot of noise on the USA Network. Before his untimely death in October of 1997, Pillman created a ton of buzz, controversy, and excitement in professional wrestling, and his final character was miles farther up the evolutionary ladder than his original US big league gimmick of Flyin’ Brian. RIP, Mr. Pillman.
I can’t discuss Pillman without mentioning Austin, but suffice it to say that his evolution is well documented, and the only thing I can add is that if Austin had been left in WWF’s incapable hands, he would have done about 6 more months as the directionless Ringmaster and then likely faded away into obscurity. It was good luck when Vince McMahon tossed his hands in the air and admitted he had no idea how to market Austin, allowing the Rattlesnake to devise his own character, the beer-drinking, anti-authority Stone Cold Steve Austin, who set the wrestling world on fire and rescued WWF from the losing end of the Monday Night War while launching the most profitable time in company history. That was one lucky break, eh Vince? Who says incompetence never pays?
I recently watched Alvin Burke, Jr. in his Antonio Banks gimmick wrestle a young CM Punk on a Full Impact Pro DVD from way back in January of 2005, and his current MVP persona was really starting to come into focus. About a year-and-a-half before his WWE debut, Burke had clearly found a rhythm that worked for him, and Antonio Banks was as entertaining on the mic that night in FIP as MVP is today on SmackDown! every Friday night. While he hadn’t completely fine-tuned the MVP character yet, he essentially performed the nuts and bolts of the character minus a little polish, and it was fun to see so much of the current gimmick being fleshed out by Burke that long ago. He had the character pretty well mapped out in his head at that point, and that developmental period in the indies served him well later on the big stage where he seemed totally at ease in the MVP roll from the beginning. Burke’s success in WWE is a fine example of developing in the minor leagues and reaping the rewards later on up in the bigs.
Mick Foley developed his original WWF gimmick of Mankind from silly (at best) to one side of a truly unique man suffering from multiple personality disorder, and from there to basically himself, becoming one of the most beloved champions in WWF history. Along the way he built the legend of Cactus Jack into a terrifying nightmare, with great amounts of help from Triple H’s selling and fear, JR’s incredible descriptions of the character, and some rare strong booking. Foley’s ability to connect with fans is unlike any other, and he practically bulled his way to strong character development whether he was meant to or not. Due to his hard work, self-sacrifice, genuine nature and love of the game, wrestling fans had almost no choice but to love Foley’s gimmicks, including his most cherished incarnation, Dude Love. No, I’m kidding. Of course it’s the fourth character of Foley himself that went on to become WWF commissioner, a best selling author, and a member of the wonderful TNA wrestling roster Make-A-Wish Foundation.
On the flip side of the coin are characters who were just right as is, like Nature Boy Ric Flair and Goldberg. Flair rode his “limousine-ridin, jet-flyin, kiss-stealin, wheelin-dealin†gimmick with very few adjustments for well over 30 years. He never endured a character makeover or wrestled under another gimmick and he remained basically the same character for his entire professional life. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. On the other hand, nobody wanted to see Goldberg do anything other than bulldoze his way through opponents, snort, snarl, and demolish everything in his path. Trying to take him outside his comfort zone was beyond foolhardy, yet more than one booker in his short but noteworthy career was guilty of taking Goldberg where he didn’t belong. As I said, if it ain’t broke…
Perhaps the two best of examples of over-developing characters to their detriment are the Brothers of Destruction, Undertaker and Kane. I think upon his debut we were meant to believe the Undertaker was actually a superhuman, undead zombie although if that’s true, I never quite understood why such a creature would care about wrestling championships or would bother to follow a referee’s instructions. You’d think a dude like that would hang around in cemeteries, but it seemed his favorite haunts were tattoo parlors.
And then the Creative team decided that he was a normal mortal sometime around 2000, and the American Badass was born. Now if the story was that Undertaker was actually a normal guy trying to intimidate his opponents all those years who suddenly grew tired of play-acting in a Halloween costume night after night, or a mental asylum escapee who’d somehow snapped out of his zombie phase and embraced reality again, that might be some interesting storytelling. Of course interesting storytelling and WWE are about as far apart as Kim Kardashian’s legs on a Saturday night, and ‘Taker became an undead zombie once again, although this time with submission wrestling talents. I wonder where in the graveyard one learns the Triangle Choke.
Undertaker’s storyline brother has fared no better in the character reinvention department. The first incarnation of Kane was simple enough, at least in a universe in which the original Undertaker was an acceptable character. He was Undertaker’s younger brother and ‘Taker himself might have been responsible for not only Kane’s horrible disfigurement (hidden under a mask and full-body wrestling gear), but also the death of their parents in a fire that may or may not have been lit intentionally by Undertaker himself. Hmmm, this could be worth watching.
But then Undertaker’s longtime manager Paul Bearer, who introduced Kane as a means of getting inside Undertaker’s head, somehow became Kane’s storyline father after apparently rolling his rotund physique atop ‘Taker and Kane’s mother while working at a funeral parlor operated by she and her husband. Uh oh, here comes WWF’s ugly side. Then after going to war with each other Kane and ‘Taker reunited, but it was a swerve, and they went after each other again. They later reunited again, forming the Brothers of Destruction for a short time. Then the monsters faced each other at two different WrestleManias and their relationship remains confusing to this day, to say the least. For Kane it gets worse from there.
Kane got himself a girlfriend in the person of Teri Power, who then cheated on him with Joanie Laurer’s former girlfriend X-Pac, and Kane was hurt when X-Pac insinuated that Kane’s face wasn’t the only thing burned up in that fire, if you know what I mean. Then his past magically changed, and now he had gone on dates in high school (although that should have been when Paul Bearer had him in a cage in the basement or something), at which time he may have raped Katie Vick, or caused her death in a car accident and then committed necrophilia on her corpse rather than calling the cops. But how could he have called for help when he didn’t talk? Only suddenly he DID talk, at first with a device like a throat cancer victim’s speech box, and only in short phrases, until he developed fully functional vocal cords and a personality, even going so far as to perform signature Hogan and Rock lines in a promo once. Okay…
Had enough? WWE hadn’t. Kane was forced to unmask, revealing the grotesque, hideous, disgusting scarred features he’d been concealing for years. You know what he looked like under that mask? A man with no eyebrows and an odd haircut. Other than the missing hairs above his eyes and atop his head Kane was a normal guy, although he did bear a striking resemblance to a certain king’s evil dentist; but I digress. Kane unmasked and revealed nothing unusual, which was dumb unless the deal was that Kane’s burns had healed long ago, but the emotional scars never went away and he still saw himself as disfigured. That could have been compelling stuff, and it would have instantly added a level of dementia and psychosis that might have nicely freshened up the tired Kane character. But of course, they never really explained any of it, and fans were left wondering just what the heck was going on.
The WWE Creative Department even released a novel in an attempt to resolve his complicated past and fill the plot holes in Kane’s character; I’ll bet that thing’s a doozy. I doubt I could handle reading one chapter of that atrocity. The point is, over-evolution can kill a character, just as leaving one stagnant for too long will wear it out. This is why leaves of absence caused by injury can be the best thing for a wrestler on TV today, and in WWE’s case, so can moving from one brand to another if they properly utilized the draft and brand split concept, anyway. Jumping back and forth between WWE and TNA can light a new fire under a performer, if given a chance to adjust accordingly. And in rare cases like Brent Albright, a performer can find their stride in the indies, although I hope he sticks around in Ring of Honor for a while longer. Since he’s honed his gimmick nicely in ROH, Albright’s current character could certainly fit into the WWE roster these days.
Either way, characters that don’t ever change risk being worn into the ground, unless the right performer in the right gimmick is kept fresh based on their own momentum. I’m sure the Rock could still be riding a version of his successful gimmick today, and crowds still go crazy for big returns by guys like Stone Cold and Hulk Hogan. Conversely, Mark Henry will never be over no matter what they try with him, and The Big Show was immediately weakened in his WWF run by switching sides too frequently, a victim of over-development if ever there was one. Now it’s hard to take him seriously no matter what he does, or how frying pan-like his chops might be.
Whether it’s Delirious having his heart broken and being manipulated into becoming a dark weapon, Santino Marella going from plucky underdog babyface to obnoxiously arrogant hot dog (or should I say Italian Sausage?), Triple H developing from snooty Greenwich snob to the Cerebral Assassin (by way of two or three other tweaks), Chris Hero dropping his annoying showoff routine to become “That Young Knockout Kidâ€, or Kurt Angle changing from milk-drinking dork to menacing wrestling machine, the evolution of characters and personalities is as natural as can be, since we all go through changes that affect who we are and how we approach the obstacles before us in our lives. It makes sense that fictional characters would go through their own changes and be markedly different afterwards.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
p.s. – “There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.†– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Elsewhere on Pulse Wrestling this week…
John Wiswell takes a look at the lack of comedy in Ring of Honor these days in his Cult of ROH, which actually inspired my column this week.
Paul Marshall dares to endure Hulk Hogan’s new Celebrity Championship Wrestling show which debuted last Saturday. What more can Hogan do to our beloved hybrid of athleticism and performance art?
Last week was GlazerMania on Pulse Wrestling, and the Ace went to town with his fifth weekly edition of The Wrestling Analyst, an insanely comprehensive list of Ring of Honor’s best matches of 2008, his 10 Thoughts on TNA Impact, and finally, the world famous Ring of Honor Weekly. Whew! Take a week off, Amigo!
Raffi “the Israeli Nightmare†Shamir breaks down all things cyber in McMahonland with his outstanding WWE DotCom Delivery.
Our very own WWE Inter-Gender Tag Team Real-Time Television Report Champions Norine Stice and Paul Marshall double-team the finest TV coverage with last Friday’s SmackDown and last Monday’s RAW reports.
And lest we forget, Bones Barkley’s 10 Thoughts on ECW rounded out the WWEek.
Finally on Pulse Wrestling this week, IWC icon Scott Keith serves up a double-shot of WWE 24/7 reviews with The Smark Rant 24/7 for World Class (April 30, 1983), and The Smark Rant 24/7 for the Showdown at Shea.
