If you’re familiar with the USWA, or any of the incarnations of Memphis-area wrestling before or since, you know that the bookers there smoked some serious damage before thinking up new gimmicks. From characters based on movie monsters to ninja turtles, Memphis is infamous for throwing together gimmicks that would make Vince Russo blush with shame.
Take, for example, The Christmas Creature.
Introduced by Brian Christopher and Memphis manager Bert Prentice, The Christmas Creature came out to the indifference of the studio crowd. Making short work of jobber Trey Keller, the Creature was put over as a monster to be reckoned with…
…except for the fact that he was dressed in glittery Christmas decoration tinsel and candy cane stripes!
Even with Christopher ranting away at the commentator’s table about his new find, it was easy to see this gimmick was going to fail miserably. Even as big as he was, the Creature was just plain goofy. And to top things off, the tinsel started coming loose and falling off the costume by the end of the match.
As with most “monster heels” in Memphis, The Creature was brought in to feud with Jerry Lawler. Whether he ever got the chance, I don’t know, but I’m sure Jerry had a hard time keeping a straight face during that match (even though he probably helped dream up this bizarre stuff).
The Christmas Creature was just the beginning of the string of bad gimmicks for the man under the mask. He would go on to become Unibomb, Doomsday and The Fake Diesel.
Yes, folks, that’s Kane, aka Glen Jacobs, under that garish crap. Even a decade after this fiasco, Jerry Lawler STILL won’t Glen live it down (even as recently as a year ago, Jerry made an inside joke about Kane looking like “some kind of Christmas creature” on the holiday edition of Raw, when someone hung ornaments on him).
Ok, so he still wears a goofy outfit, and yeah, he’s been in some horrible angles the last couple of years…but at least it doesn’t have to wear the tinsel anymore!