Wrestlers Who've Been Typecasted...

[sungod2020]

I'm talking about those who's characters are limited to one storyline or one type of storyline and aren't relevant to do anything else.

Virgil - Perhaps the most obvious example. For over three years he took abuse from his protege Ted Dibiase until he had enough and turned on him at the 1991 Royal Rumble to the delight of the crowd. He then proceeded to feud with him for the rest of the year capturing The Million Dollar Championship at that year's Summerslam. After he lost the belt back to Dibiase that was it for Curly Bill as he was regulated to a JTTS role and his overness(or moreso overness by association) waned accordingly.

Nailz - Made his debut in the WWF in 1992 by savagely attacking The Big Bossman who supposedly(a term I use loosely since he did debut as an evil prison guard) beat him while he spent time in prison for unspecified crimes. Lost the feud at the Survivor Series and was suppose to feud with The Undertaker, but went berserk on Vince over a pay dispute which lead to his immediate termination. While there's certainly alot of logic holes in the feud, he left at the right time anyway since there really wasn't any mileage after the Bossman feud, so it ended up making sense on that front.

Val Venis - Debuted in 1998 to much fanfare, his character was an adult film star who had a tendency to bang other men's wives, or in Ken Shamrock's case, his kayfabe sister. While this certainly matched the theme of The Attitude Era, it would get old after awhile and would've needed a gimmick change which they kinda sorta did in the summer of 2000 when started donning white tights and cutting his hair, but the problem was, it actually killed what remaining overness he had at the time. 

Him joining the Right to Censor did help revitalize him a bit, but whatever heat he had stemmed from group leader Steven Richards. After they disbanded, he went back to his porn star gimmick, then reverted to RAW GM Eric Bischoff's lackey using his real name(Sean Morley or Chief Morley) before becoming a JTTS for the rest of his run. It's amazing he lasted 10 years given his original and most famous gimmick was very limited.

Any other characters/wrestlers you can think of that were only good for one type of angle?

[karl100589]

Nick Dinsmore was well regarded as a technical wrestler, but gets typecast in comedy roles because of Eugene

[Mozenrath]

New Jack absolutely would qualify. Lance Storm said New Jack could work, but that basically, that isn't what anyone was watching New Jack for.

To a lesser degree, given Mick Foley got more chances to showcase some range, Cactus Jack didn't exactly get a lot of chances to showcase technical skills despite being fully capable of it. Mick recognized, however, that his brawling was more unique to him and that as he put it, the less suplexes he threw and more punches, the fewer peanut butter sandwiches he had to eat for dinner because his bookings got more frequent and lucrative.

[Hulkshi Tanahashi]

Ted DiBiase was kind of typecasted in WCW. He didn't have a full-fledge Million Dollar Man gimmick, but they were obviously banking on people remembering that gimmick as an explanation for the nWo's cashflow, i.e. DiBiase was paying the bills.

Also, I don't think James Mitchell has had any gimmick that didn't imply he was the Devil. Hell, he played the f***ing Devil in Ring Of Glory.

[malloc]

Ziggler got pigeonholed as the guy who will make you look good and sell for you. Credible threat but don't worry, the face is going over and on to a real feud with a champion next.

[James Fabiano]

The Nailz thing....he was even mentioning the Bossman when he was working indies. Never mind he was probably Big Bubba or something by then.

Rhonda Singh got a Bertha Faye lite character when she went to WCW.

[Aceorton]

Mike Rotunda, definitely. How many variations of "jerk wearing business attire" did he have from 1990 on? That vibe stuck with him always and forever. Even when he was in the nWO wearing a T-shirt, it just felt like IRS on a weekend about to go out and clean his garage.

I'd nominate Lanny Poffo here also. At a certain point in the '80s, he was stuck being "intelligent and increasingly effeminate acrobat," which would have included his WCW Gorgeous George character if they'd ever actually used him.

[Ozman]

Dustin Rhodes. I feel that Seven, Black Reign, and even his current presentation in AEW are all different variations of Goldust.

[sungod2020]

Terry Taylor as The Red Rooster would be another one. Before his WWF run, he was a promising up and comer, had an upper midcard role in Mid South, but once he was saddled with that rooster gimmick, it effectively killed his career. He still gets reminders of that to this day.

I think Chavo Guerrero as "the other Guerrero" would qualify. You can't mention him without drawing comparisons to his uncle Eddie. He might've been a talented performer, but whatever he was capable of, Eddie was better at it. The cruel twist of fate was that Kerwin White character could've been his meal ticket to gaining an identity of his own(if used right), but Eddie's death(understandably) put an end to that. He can just never get out of Eddie's shadow.

[James Fabiano]

Will typecasting ruin the Tensai character?

[wildojinx]

Hacksaw Jim Duggan-While his super patriot gimmick worked in the wwf of 1987-93 with all the evil foreigners hanging around, when he tried to take that to WCW it didnt work out as much since WCW never really leaned into that trope by the time Duggan came in, so he was given go-nowhere feuds with Big Bubba and VK Wallstreet. Him turning heel, shaving the beard, and joining Team Canada did at least give him something to do, but then they inexplicably dropped it and had him turn face again, where he literally did nothing after.

[Nr1Humanoid]

There is nothing more terrible than watching a New Jack match with copyrighted music edited out.

[nickcave]

Sept 22, 2023 22:08:15 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

New Jack absolutely would qualify. Lance Storm said New Jack could work, but that basically, that isn't what anyone was watching New Jack for.

To a lesser degree, given Mick Foley got more chances to showcase some range, Cactus Jack didn't exactly get a lot of chances to showcase technical skills despite being fully capable of it. Mick recognized, however, that his brawling was more unique to him and that as he put it, the less suplexes he threw and more punches, the fewer peanut butter sandwiches he had to eat for dinner because his bookings got more frequent and lucrative.

Reminds me of when Kane and the Big Show had a match on Raw where they only did technical wrestling lol

[XaviersSS2015hair]

Sept 23, 2023 4:26:07 GMT -5 malloc said:

Ziggler got pigeonholed as the guy who will make you look good and sell for you. Credible threat but don't worry, the face is going over and on to a real feud with a champion next.

This is what I came to say. I don't know where he'll go (besides GCW for their NYE show) or what he'll accomplish for the rest of his career, but I'm not sure if Dolph will ever be able to get the WWE JTTS stench off of him.
I didn't see any of his NXT run, but when I heard he was NXT champ my first reaction was "LOL really? That's what has become of NXT huh?"
Unfortunately as talented as he is, the jobber stench is strong with this one.

[THE FVNKER]

Kevin Fertig comes to mind as someone who usually had one of those supernatural/spooky type gimmicks everywhere.

[FHgrad99]

Sept 22, 2023 16:45:31 GMT -5 sungod2020 said:

I'm talking about those who's characters are limited to one storyline or one type of storyline and aren't relevant to do anything else.

Virgil - Perhaps the most obvious example. For over three years he took abuse from his protege Ted Dibiase until he had enough and turned on him at the 1991 Royal Rumble to the delight of the crowd. He then proceeded to feud with him for the rest of the year capturing The Million Dollar Championship at that year's Summerslam. After he lost the belt back to Dibiase that was it for Curly Bill as he was regulated to a JTTS role and his overness(or moreso overness by association) waned accordingly.

Nailz - Made his debut in the WWF in 1992 by savagely attacking The Big Bossman who supposedly(a term I use loosely since he did debut as an evil prison guard) beat him while he spent time in prison for unspecified crimes. Lost the feud at the Survivor Series and was suppose to feud with The Undertaker, but went berserk on Vince over a pay dispute which lead to his immediate termination. While there's certainly alot of logic holes in the feud, he left at the right time anyway since there really wasn't any mileage after the Bossman feud, so it ended up making sense on that front.

Val Venis - Debuted in 1998 to much fanfare, his character was an adult film star who had a tendency to bang other men's wives, or in Ken Shamrock's case, his kayfabe sister. While this certainly matched the theme of The Attitude Era, it would get old after awhile and would've needed a gimmick change which they kinda sorta did in the summer of 2000 when started donning white tights and cutting his hair, but the problem was, it actually killed what remaining overness he had at the time. 

Him joining the Right to Censor did help revitalize him a bit, but whatever heat he had stemmed from group leader Steven Richards. After they disbanded, he went back to his porn star gimmick, then reverted to RAW GM Eric Bischoff's lackey using his real name(Sean Morley or Chief Morley) before becoming a JTTS for the rest of his run. It's amazing he lasted 10 years given his original and most famous gimmick was very limited.

Any other characters/wrestlers you can think of that were only good for one type of angle?

I totally agree with Nailz. Even though he was a totally different character before he signed with the WWE and became Nailz in the WWE but after he left the WWE he always wore the Nailz attire no matter where he wrestled.

[SirLucas]

Christian...to some extent is type casted as Edge's buddy. Even when he found success in TNA, he was always the "less popular member of the duo."

[sungod2020]

Can't believe we went this long and didn't mention Marty Jannetty. He's become a punchline for the less successful member of the tag team once they get broken up.

[THE FVNKER]

Ya know.. this one just came to mind and it's pretty crazy.

AJ Styles was always "the future of wrestling" in TNA all the way up until he left, despite being a multi-time champion and having previously held every belt besides whatever women's ones they had.

[Psicofreak667]

There's this wrestler Yasushi Tsujimoto, best known for his brother YASSHI gimmick.

He was part of Ultimo Dragon's Toryumon 2000 Project (T2P). Something about Toryumon is that it always had clear ranks - one wrestler is the main eventer, these guys are upper midcard, these guys are lower midcard, etc... Yasushi Tsujimoto was roughly tied with Masato Yoshino as the second highest ranking wrestler of the T2P group. His first gimmick was Stevie 'brother' Tsujimoto, a llave wrestler who kind of liked hip hop. Then he joined the Italian Connection stable, changed his name to brother YASSINI, and started teaming with Condotti Shuji/Shuji Kondo. They turned on the Italian Connection to form a heel stable called Aagan Iisou. And this is where YASSHI started, for lack of a better word, flanderizing. His hip-hop fan/party animal gimmick started being played up more, his llave skills got less use...

Then the Toryumon/Dragon Gate split happened, and the new Dragon Gate bookers turned Aagan Iisou from the menacing top heel stable to warm bodies in multi-man matches. YASSHI got hit hardest with this. He started adding things to his schtick like the "tag in, talk a bunch of trash and tag right back out without doing anything" bit, being more of a wuss with a big mouth who needed Kondo to protect him from the consequences of his talking.

Kondo and YASSHI left Dragon Gate went to AJPW and joined the Voodoo Murders. AJPW pushed YASSHI even further down the hapless loudmouth gimmick. He never got direct wins - ever. Every time he took a singles match and couldn't hide behind Kondo he got obliterated.

Basically he got typecast into a super-specific niche - "cocky little loudmouth whose bark is way worse than his bite".

But borderline comedy heel underdog is probably a much easier role to play than your average Toryumon/Dragon Gate high flyer.