10 Worst Rebrands In Wrestling History

7. Demolition Smash to Repo Man

Proof that tearing apart tag teams only to rebrand one of them into a shallow grave isn’t a recent invention of WWE’s.

Seeing poor Otis robbed of everything that made him Otis after the passing of Heavy Machinery was sad, but I can’t claim to ever have been the big guy’s biggest fan.

Getting a slightly rawer deal was Smash who saw his run as part of Demolition be erased from people’s minds as he was rebranded… Repo Man, a little weasel with a Sly Cooper mask, shrill laughter and a habit of nicking people’s stuff, which is NOT WHAT A REPO MAN DOES.

As Smash, his career peak was a 478-day run holding the tag titles, which stood as the longest in WWE history for a whopping 27 years, as Repo Man his career peak was stealing Macho Man Randy Savage’s hat.

Again, Randy Savage was a rich man who could afford to buy his hats outright, he wasn’t making payments on it, that’s NOT WHAT A REPO MAN DOES. From Conqueror to Clown in one easy move.

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6. Emma to Emmalina to Emma

Bloody hell, where do you even start. NXT 2.0 was a rebrand of an entire television series which took less than a month, Emma being rebranded to Emmalina was a process that took FIVE F**KING MONTHS.

I wish I was kidding. Emma was taken off TV, and the first clip of ‘ooh debuting soon Emmalina ooh, sexy ooh’ aired on October 3, 2016. The vignettes kept airing, and airing, and airing, and airing, and airing.

2016 turned into 2017, still no Emmalina, and Dave Meltzer confirmed that the vignettes were actually just a running joke at this point.

Finally, after five months of quote unquote ‘teasing’, on the February 13, 2017 episode of Raw, over five months since the first vignette, Emmalina walked out, said hello, then said, and now you’ll see the makeover of Emmalina to Emma, and then walked away as the crowd released a few confused and insignificant boos.

Five months of a talent’s life, pissed away in a single joke that probably popped the writers room, but left everyone else just feeling sorry for Emma having the prime years of her career wasted. And speaking of dumbass jokes…

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5. One Man Gang to Akeem: The African Dream

I mean, listen, One Man Gang wasn’t exactly Hulk Hogan but he had a few accolades under his belt.

He was a reliable heel gimmick, convincingly portrayed by a tough-looking son of a bitch, main evented against Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, his team won the first-ever Survivor Series main event, he got to the semi-final in the WrestleMania IV championship tournament, he won the unofficial first-ever Royal Rumble, came second in the first Royal Rumble, all in all a pretty good upper midcard heel you’ve got there.

No no, thought Vince, you know what’d be even MORE MONEY, a white guy from South Carolina, pretending to be African, replete with accent (oh no), airquotes ‘traditional dress’ (oh no) and dancing. The ohest of oh nos.

So was born, Akeem the African Dream. A different time. To make matters worse, the whole thing was an inside joke for creative, designed to ridicule the American Dream Dusty Rhodes, right down to his dance moves.

Fun fact, WWE Creative would get a chance to ridicule one of the pillars of the NWA directly a year later later, when Dusty Rhodes debuted in Vince’s company, and they put Mr. Hard Times in bloody hell no really polka dots in yet another example of Vince stamping money to death in the name of banter. 

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4. Terry Taylor to The Red Rooster 

Bit of context needed for this one. Prior to 1988 when he signed with the WWF, the global leader in sports entertainment lest we forget, Terry Taylor was a city on the grow.

He had been a rising star in the NWA and Mid-South where the handsome athletic lad was being groomed to become one of their biggest stars, even defeating Ted DiBiase for the North American Heavyweight Championship.

Vince snapped him up and in an act of career homicide worthy of its own true crime podcast, rebranded him as… The Red Rooster, a man who if not thought he was a chicken, at least acted enough like a chicken for irreparable damage to be done to his credibility as a top drawer.

He wore a sparkly red jacket, gelled up his hair in a dyed red mohawk that even The Miz circa the mid-2000s would look at and say, that looks clucking stupid.

Not only that, but he was actively packaged as an inexperienced loser who needed hand-holding to win a match.

The Red Rooster’s career highlight is beating Bobby Heenan at WrestleMania 5. Good job, chicken. You beat that manager.

The guy was young, had a good look and could swap holds with the best of them, but no one will ever remember that. They just remember the f**king chicken.

• rebrands
• Shorty G
• Chad Gable
• Adam Blampied

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