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 Beaver Cleavage
In May of 1999, the tag team of the Headbangers (Mosh and Thrasher) were out of action due to Thrasher suffering a serious knee injury. With Thrasher sidelined for months, Mosh was left with nothing to do. Vince McMahon wanted head writer Vince Russo to create an outrageous character to compliment the ‘Attitude Era’ that the WWF was in the middle of. Russo always had the idea to parody one of his favorite shows growing up called ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ Since Mosh aka Charles Warrington was doing nothing at the time, Russo chose him to get the gimmick.
According to Warrington, he had a lot of reservations doing the over the top gimmick, but was excited at the opportunity to try his hands at a solo career. The character’s name was Harry’ Beaver’ Cleavage, who lived with his “mother” Mrs. Cleavage aka former Canadian bodybuilder turned developmental wrestler Marianna Komlos. The vignettes introducing the pair would be filmed in black and white very much like the classic sitcom it was parodying. To add another layer to the Cleavage characters, the vignettes would involve a lot of sexual innuendo between Beaver Cleavage and his mother Mrs. Cleavage.
Warrington said that one of the biggest hurdles with the gimmick wasn’t so much how outrageous it was…because after all this was the Attitude Era, but the fact that he and Marianna ‘Mrs. Cleavage’ Komlos did not get along behind the scenes. Warrington said the two were very different people who saw the gimmick go different ways before they even debuted in the ring. Despite their personal differences, both Warrington and Komlos agreed to continue the gimmick. The Beaver Cleavage character wrestled just one match, before Vince McMahon decided to pull the plug on it. Apparently USA network executives were not pleased with the gimmick and neither were advertisers. The gimmick was scrapped and Warrington became Chaz and Komlos was kayfabe revealed as his girlfriend to explain the dropping of the characters.
To Browse other entries of the Gimmick Table…Please Click Here.