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Hi all. I am a long time reader, first time columnist to OWW, so any comments on style are gratefully received. I'm 21, live in the UK, but am currently studying at University in Australia. This article started out as a response to Rag Morton's excellent article "Return of the Real Gimmick"", but kind of ballooned, so I elected to respond in the form of an article so I could get what I want to say across easier without having to worry about length. If you haven't read Rag's article, I suggest you do! It's a very well written piece (should be really as he writes for a sports newspaper!) championing the return of the "real gimmick" to the WWE. A very interesting article which got me thinking, but I have to disagree with his basic sentiment.

Personally, I would say the recent trend for more "gimmicky" wrestlers detracts from the product. True there are exceptions to every rule - I guess in this case most notably the Undertaker - but in my view, if too much emphasis is placed on the wrestler's gimmick it can seriously detract from their in-ring work and therefore their ability to be successful, both in terms of getting over with the crowd and drawing money.

One of the examples sited in Rag's article is Eugene. Now Nick Dinsmore has clearly enjoyed some success with this gimmick, most notably in his period of interaction with HHH and Evolution, but I believe his gimmick is now holding him back. There comes a point where so much emphasis is placed on the gimmick that the viability of the individual as a fighter is compromised. Eugene is stuck in the lower mid-card and I would suggest until he loses the Eugene moniker, comes out as Nick Dinsmore and belittles the fans for buying into it him being "special", that is where he will stay.

Continuing this theme, looking at the examples sited in Rag's article, not one of the wrestlers mentioned has achieved any amount of success and even looking at older examples (of which I openly admit I have limited knowledge) I can't think of any truly gimmicky wrestlers that have made it to the top until well back into the1980s. In the Attitude Era, successful wrestlers may have had gimmicks such as being "Stone Cold" or "The People's Champion", but these were subtexts to their ability to beat the snot out of people in the ring and/or make them look stupid outside of it and were not "real gimmicks" in the way Rag uses the term.

Just off the top of my head, think about the wrestlers at the top of the game today; the likes of HHH, Shawn Michaels, John Cena and Edge on RAW - Kurt Angle, Rey Mysterio, Mark Henry, JBL on Smackdown! Looking even more closely, you have Christian Cage, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles, Jeff Jarrett and Monty Brown on TNA (again I can see Abyss is an exception along the lines of 'Taker). Pretty much all of the top stars in any brand either have an almost indefinable gimmick or a gimmick based simply around them being stronger or better than anyone else.

In conclusion, in my view, overplaying of a gimmick or a gimmick which is the main focus of a character detracts from that wrestler's ability to be successful in the long term. It may help a new star become established in the lower and mid-card, but if the "real gimmick", as Rag refers to it, is not discarded it can subsequently inhibit their chances of success in the upper card.

Mind you, I only really got into wrestling in the Attitude era, so I guess this could be personal preference! What does everyone think" Are "real gimmicks" going to make a comeback in modern wrestling, or does the post-Attitude era (incidentally, we really need to come up with a decent name for the modern era!) demand a level of realism that overly-gimmicky characters cannot deliver"

by Jeff Knott ..