The Gimmick Table: The Origin of Adam Bomb

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 Adam Bomb

In 1993, Bryan Clark joined the World Wrestling Federation after stints in places like the AWA, WCW and Smoky Mountain. When he sat down with Vince McMahon at WWF headquarters, Clark revealed that he was offered three different gimmicks to choose from. One was a military gimmick based on Clark’s prior experience serving in the armed forces, the second was ‘the Ringmaster’ which eventually ended up with Steve Austin two years later and the other gimmick was a character named ‘Adam Bomb.’ The Adam Bomb gimmick was created by a man named Tom Fleming who worked for the company in various roles including creative, costume and prop designing and illustrator. The character was a survivor of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor leak that happened back in 1979. Adam Bomb was billed as the ‘Monster from three Mile Island.’ Clark chose this gimmick over the other two because he felt he could do the most with it.

While Fleming designed the outfit and the basic look of the character…Clark added a few personal touches of his own including yellow eye contacts and the red tongue. Clark also said that he sat with Fleming and rattled of a number of ideas that Vince McMahon could use as far as Adam Bomb merchandise. One of which included little nerf type footballs designed to look like mini bombs. Clark said McMahon’s eyes immediately lit up, when Clark presented pages of these ideas to him.

When Adam Bomb finally debuted, he was given Johnny Polo aka Scott Levy as his manager. Clark was not thrilled to have a mouthpiece doing the talking for him, and thought that the character of Johnny Polo didn’t mesh well with his own gimmick. Despite that, Vince felt that Clark was weak on promos and needed a manager. The problems with Johnny Polo did not end there with Clark, as he saw Levy constantly getting in trouble with management backstage and believed his association with Levy would trickle down to him. Eventually, Polo was replaced with another manager in Harvey Wippleman. The Adam Bomb character was starting to hear some cheers and the decision was made to turn him into a babyface.

Bryan Clark said that Vince, Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco all promised him a big push as a babyface. He said that both Brisco and Patterson promised him a run with the Intercontinental title, however, that never came to be. Feeling frustrated with his lack of push, Clark ultimately quit the WWF in 1995.