10 Terrible Gimmicks For Hall of Fame Wrestlers

8. Ricky Steamboat – The Dragon

Step away from your keyboards, pedants. I do not want to hear ‘but Adam, Ricky Steamboat’s always been Ricky The Dragon Steamboat and he’s great, what a blunder you’ve made Adam, what a sexy blunder’. Don’t want to hear that, because yes, Ricky Steamboat was given the moniker of The Dragon by WWE in the mid-80s, he was Ricky The Dragon Steamboat when he competed at the first Mania, and at Mania 3 during the much-lauded match with Randy Savage.

The Dragon gimmick I’m talking about is the one he had for a tiny run in 1991 between Mania and Survivor Series where they simply referred to him as The Dragon, removed the rest of his name, a la Alexander Rusev, Antonio Cesaro and Austin Theory, dressed him up like literal fire-breathing dragon, the state of that entrance gear and, bafflingly, pretended like he was a brand new character.

Why did they erase Steamboat’s name and history? Because he’s just come back from WCW, where he’d had one of the greatest feuds of all time with Ric Flair, including winning the NWA World Championship as Ricky Steamboat.

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