Apologies for the late start, didn't have the time I originally planned.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When one utters the words "The Shockmaster," all fans of professional wrestling instantly chuckle at the thought of one of the most infamous moments in it's business' history. Not only is it considered one of the best unintentionally funny things to ever occur, it completely destroyed all possible success that the gimmick could garner. After what occurred, nothing could have resurrected that character... however, you can't help but wonder what would have happened to the SM if the incident never occurred? Will he achieve success or was failure already written in it's destiny?
Today, gentlemen and the select few of the select few ladies that are reading this, I am here to demonstrate why the SM would have failed even without the tripping over the wooden beam.
The Character Wasn't Logical
The first thing that comes to mind is the helmet... essentially, it was a space trooper helmet from Star Wars re-designed by paint and glitter. Any professional wrestling fan would have identified the relation between the SM's helmet and a ST helmet, automatically not taking the character as serious as the debut promo was made out to be. Also, Fred Ottman, the man behind the character even had this to say:
Fred Ottman said:
They put me in a Storm Trooper mask which they painted and covered in glitter, I couldn't see a thing.
How was the man supposed to perform in the ring if the mask they gave him limited his visibility to the extent that he saw only partial images at best? Wrestlers like Kane didn't have that much of a problem... but if Kane had trouble breathing, how would have Fred faired when playing the SM? Now, he wasn't the best big man wrestler in the world and wasn't the most successful wrestler in the WWF... so limiting priorities like breathing and vision (with the former being a bigger concern due to his weight) would be the worst possible thing you'd want him to do. The possibilities of wrestling in that mask would idiotic, and changing it to something completely different would have killed the kayfabe aspect of his character. Fred wasn't even the man to voice his own character and needed the assistance of the Anderson's
(........Anderson's) to perform the mic skills. When you need help in the mic skills so bad that someone else is required, you're not going to last long.
There is a lot of things that could go wrong with Fred Ottman trying to successfully pull off the Shockmaster gimmick from what was evident in the debut promo ALONE... especially if the helmet wasn't secured on tightly (or even secured on for that matter), which is evident in the SM debut video where his mask rolled off. I thought masked wrestlers weren't supposed to have their mask escape their head so easily?
