Gimmick Profile: The Executioner

Wrestling is great fodder for trivia.  So for my first ever gimmick profile I chose the first wrestler ever introduced at a Wrestlemania event.  None other than The Executioner.

Even from the very beginning the WWE (or WWF at the time) had very high hopes for Wrestlemania.  They always envisioned it being the year's ultimate wrestling spectacle.  So you would think to kick off such a grand event the bookers would have scrambled and kicked it off with a punch.  You would think that they would want to tear the house down.

But instead they brought out a masked jobber to take on Tito Santana.  To make matters worse The Executioner was executed so poorly that during the intro this image was shown...

I'm almost positive that the masked man shown in the promo is actually one of The Killer Bees wearing the masks they would wear for their entrance.  The actual Executioner that revealed himself moments later looked like this...

With such care and detail put into this character I'm amazed the guy even got a pre-match interview.  And as expected he really didn't have a whole lot to say.  With such a vague backstory perhaps The Executioner would have gotten over better had they introduced him as The Bankrobber.  As least he would have had some backstory to cut a promo off of, and the mask would have made more sense.

After this event The Executioner was executed... not literally, the character.  Sort of an anti climatic end for a man who was literally the first wrestler ever announced at a Wrestlemania.  But that's the problem with gimmicks, they have to go somewhere.  Seriously, what is The Executioner supposed to talk about in promos?  Give gory details of some of his favorite beheading stories?  Maybe in the attitude era that would have worked.  Without those stories the only logical explaination for The Executioner's gimmick would be "Fat, white luchadore," which is borderline racist considering that he was fighting Tito Santana.

Instead The Executioner moved on to bigger and better things... literally.  The man under the mask was "Playboy" Buddy Rose.  A guy usually reserved for the comic relief heel roles.  A role that he was very good at playing, and made a name for himself with.  Which begs the question even more, why in the hell would you put a mask on a already established wrestler to open your biggest show ever?

But it's wrestling, so it rarely makes sense.

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