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 Meat
Shawn Stasiak is the son of former WWWF world champion Stan ‘the Man’ Stasiak. In 1999, the WWF scheduled to debut the second generation wrestler in a much different light than what was ultimately presented. Stasiak talked about how he had wrestled Kurt Angle on several dark matches before Monday Night Raw. WWF management showed him a video package that was to air before his eventual debut where it spoke about Stasiak’s legacy in the wrestling business. It was basically going to play up Shawn’s second generation background as the son of a former world champion in the company.
Stasiak said his TV debut kept getting pushed back one week after another. In April of 1999, he was informed he would finally debut on television. The vignette that he saw never made it on air. Instead, Stasiak sat down with Vince McMahon and the creative writing team of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. He was told that they decided to alter Shawn Stasiak’s presentation. Instead of being introduced as a second generation wrestler, he would be presented as a man slave to the female faction P.M.S. (Pretty Mean Sisters) of Ryan Shamrock, Jackie and Terri Runnels.
The name he was given was ‘Meat’, as in Shawn Stasiak is a piece of meat…pertaining to being a sex slave for P.M.S. . Stasiak said that he was told the name was derived from Ed Ferrara’s father, who played softball and was given that nickname. Stasiak was disappointed that he was given the Meat gimmick, but decided to try and make the opportunity work. Jim Ross promised that the Meat gimmick would ultimately pay dividends to his career. Stasiak said that he made his WWF TV debut as Meat on April 13th, which was his late father’s actual birthday. It was a taped episode of Sunday Night Heat. The gimmick lasted until December of 1999, when Stasiak was fired from the company.
To browse other entries in the Gimmick Table series…Please Click Here.