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WWE, in it's 50-year history has a curious record when naming its performers.
Sometimes, they use a wrestler's real name such as John Cena, Ronda Rousey and Brock Lesnar.
Other times, what might seem like a ludicrous gimmick and moniker such as The Undertaker and The Godfather will somehow strike a chord with the audience and achieve lasting success. Godfather is incredibly in the WWE Hall of Fame and Taker is still competing three decades after his debut.
WWE has a vested interest of course in naming it's performers with monikers that they come up with themselves; so they can trademark them so it's employees can not use their famous wrestler names and make money elsewhere.
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When Bryan Danielson, famed independent worker and a superstar at home and Japan, and former Ring of Honor World Champion joined WWE, he was re-monikered Daniel Bryan and booked to lose his first 10 WWE matches. It was an exercise in turning a successful gimmick into an unsuccessful one. In this case it was intentional.
However, in most cases WWE devise what they believe will be successful wrestler names or gimmicks only to be proved terribly wrong when said wrestlers are paraded in front of it's audience.
Case in point, the April 15 episode of Raw, in which WWE debuted the successful War Raiders tag team as the re-imagined "Viking Experience." The name change was rightly derided online. Time will tell if WWE choose to stick with it or change the tag team's moniker once again.
The following slideshow looks at five of the most unforgettable wrestler names in WWE history.
Let us know in the comments section if you think of any other wrestler names that deserve consideration for this list.
What exactly is a gobbledygooker anyway?!
#5 The Viking Experience
We are one week removed from the main roster debut of the War Raiders, or should I say The Viking Experience.
Word is that Vince McMahon changed the tag team's name the day of the April 15, Raw. Further reports stated that McMahon believed his family friendly WWE could not have a wrestler act with "War" in the title.
Whatever the reason, this promising act now shares a name with an attraction in York, England's Jorvik Viking Centre, which was inundated with calls and emails about WWE following this now infamous episode of Raw.
Who can take this champion tag team seriously now. The name change has made them a complete joke.
The irony is that they were never supposed to be actual Vikings, more that their wrestling style embodied the Viking spirit.
#4 Mr Ass
Billy Gunn achieved his greatest wrestling fame as part of D-Generation X as Mr Ass.
Despite that fact, his was a ludicrous name for a top line superstar.
Gunn was a wrestler who was never blessed with great monikers. Prior to him joining Road Dogg to form the New Age Outlaws, he was known as Rockabilly, a cheap Honky Tonk Man imitation and when he joined Impact Wrestling then known as TNA in the mid 2000s, he was rather unimaginatively christened The Outlaw before being known as Kip James.
Not exactly a name set to strike fear into opponents.
But Mr Ass is on another level entirely. For a man who had ambitions of being a main eventer; an ambition WWE shared for a time considering his King of the Ring 1999 victory and Summerslam co-main event with The Rock, a gimmick centred around him being fixated on his own posterior was peculiar to say the least.
#3 Brutus Beefcake
beefcake
/ˈbiːfkeɪk/
noun INFORMAL
attractive men with well-developed muscles.
Ah, Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. The moniker Beefcake, to play devil's advocate does make sense as a wrestler name to some degree as per it's dictionary definition.
However, Beefcake in the PG world of 1980s WWE does seem suspiciously sexual as a moniker.
The Barber part of Brutus Beefcake's name somehow makes it sound ever more ludicrous, as if he were some specialised member of the Chippendales.
A truly nutty name, for a wrestler who was extremely limited as a performer between the ropes as well.
Is it any worse that one of his subsequent character names; The Booty Man, for instance?
The Booty Man is on a level with Mr Ass for sure.
Amazing that this man main evented Summerslam 1989 and was inducted into the 2019 WWE Hall of Fame. Even more incredible that he enjoyed career success with an array of the worst wrestler names in history.
#2 The Goon
Whilst WCW had just kicked off the revolutionary and highly successful New World Order gimmick, WWE was debuting The Goon on the July 20 episode of Superstars.
The gimmick heavy WWE explained that the curiously named Goon had supposedly been banned from the NHL due to his violent tendencies and had now been unleashed on WWE!
Although the word goon is associated with the world "fool" and other negative stereotypes, in fairness to WWE, it did fit the character as in Hockey parlance, a goon is a player who is designed to solely take out the oppositions best player.
The Goon failed miserably in that endeavour however, when he was pinned by WWE's best, The Undertaker in under a minute a few weeks after his debut.
The character lasted a few months before WWE saw sense and discontinued the gimmick.
#1 The Berserker
What is it with WWE and Vikings?
Back in the early 1990s, they planned to debut John Nord as "The Viking" which would have made sense as a moniker, however at the last minute they changed his name to the ludicrous, "Berserker" moniker.
In actuality, the name is historically accurate as an old Norse warrior, in the Viking age. But as most people know, it's most common association is with the word "berserk", meaning hysterical or insane. Hey, whoever came up with this moniker must have been berserk themselves.
To make matters worse, when The Berserker came to the ring he would repeatedly shout the word "Huss" over and over.
Unsurprisingly, Nord's Berserker character did not get over with the WWE audience, who admittedly were well used to gimmicks of this kind, demonstrating it's absurdity.
The Berserker was one step to far even for early 1990s WWE fans. The character barely lasted two years and was mercilessly scrapped in February of 1993.
The Berserker; the worst wrestling moniker of all time.
