WILW: Seven
This was a thing, on TV, for free…
When examining the worst of the scary gimmicks in wrestling, it had to end here. I mean, there was just no other choice than Dustin Rhodes and Seven. You see, Dustin Rhodes was a pretty big deal in WCW. The son of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes, Dustin was the Natural. A blue chipper. A no doubt World Champion. Except that he wasn’t. He fizzled, bladed illegally during a match, was fired and went to WWE. And became Goldust. For awhile, Goldust was good. There were some good feuds and good matches. The character was creepy as hell and worked because it was so different. But then, THEN, it went off the rails. Hard. Goldust became the Artist Formerly Known as Goldust and began coming to the ring with a bondage gag in his mouth and fake tits strapped to his singlet. (which is quite a wonderful sentence to be able to type) Upon release from his contract he returned to WCW in one of the most ill-conceived gimmicks of all time.
The plan was to have a creepy, Undertaker-esque character in WCW. They began to air vignettes showing this corpse painted, black leather clad man standing outside a small boys window. This somehow got by sensors as a good idea. The vignettes showed for a few weeks and eventually lead to the big debut. Except somewhere along the way the higher ups at WCW got wise to just exactly how fucking insane creepy child abductor is as a gimmick and decided to drop it. What followed was one of the best worked shoots of all time as Dustin Rhodes, in full on Seven regalia, floated, FLOATED, to the fucking ring and lit into WCW, WWF/E, and the nonsense that was this new gimmick. Now, everyone knew what he was going to say and they let him say it but still, taken at face value, as all wrestling related things should be, its amazing. It is, in my opinion, the greatest dumpster fire of a scary gimmick in the history of ever. Check out the vignette and debut below and follow me on twitter, @geekadedan, to let me know what you think. I hope you have enjoyed our look at some of the worst of the worst. Share this post wherever you can and join me next week as we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Until then…
