Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
A gimmick is something that is intended to hook the attention of fans to a wrestler. They may be outrageous or steeped more in reality, whatever the case may be…some have succeeded and many others have failed. The Gimmick Table takes a look at the origins of some of your favorite and not so favorite gimmicks of professional wrestlers.
Today we browse the gimmick of Shark Boy
In 1995, Dean Roll was driving to a training session at Les Thatcher’s wrestling school. He knew that he was a smaller wrestler and would eventually need a cool gimmick to succeed in the business and ultimately make it to his end goal…the World Wrestling Federation. Roll knew that the only wrestles smaller or equal in size to him were luchadors from Mexico. While on the road, a song came on the radio…it was by the Toadies called “I Come from the Water.” While the song was playing, Roll started imagining a superhero type of character that rose from the ocean and became a professional wrestler.
The idea that Dean Roll initially came up with was a masked gimmick named El Piranha. Roll started using that gimmick on the independent circuit. It wasn’t until he started wrestling for Ian Rotten in Louisville, Kentucky that things completely changed for Roll. Dean credits Ian Rotten with tweaking the El Piranha gimmick and renamed it Shark Boy. He was billed from ‘the Deep Blue Sea’ or from 20,000 leagues Under the Sea….part man part shark. The Shark Boy gimmick really didn’t take off until Roll joined TNA wrestling. It was with TNA that Shark Boy developed a strong cult like following and his career seemingly took off from there. Shark Boy was a member of TNA’s roster on and off for 13 years.
Shark Boy tweaked the gimmick further by doing a parody of Stone Cold Steve Austin. He talked with a Texas accent and used the Stunner as his finisher…which he renamed the ‘Chummer.’ He also drank cold water, instead of beer and shouted…”Oh Shell Yeah!” The gimmick even got praise from Steve Austin himself. While Shark Boy never made it into the WWF/WWE, he was able to have a nice career nonetheless. He still makes appearances all over including AEW.
To Browse Other Entries in The Gimmick Table Series…Please Click Here.