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 Henry O. Godwinn
When Mark Canterbury signed with the World Wrestling Federation in 1994, he sat down with Vince McMahon to come up with a gimmick to debut for the promotion. As was the usual for McMahon, he asked a series of questions to try and delve into Canterbury’s background, hobbies, side jobs etc. The one thing that caught Vince’s attention, was Canterbury’s childhood. Canterbury revealed that both sets of grandparents were farmers and he had fond memories of visiting them and working on their farms.
Vince McMahon listened as Canterbury talked glowingly about what he did as a kid on the farm. Mark Canterbury mentioned feeding all the animals and using slop for the pigs. Canterbury said that is when Vince’s eyes lit up and within a day, Vince came up with the pig farmer gimmick for Canterbury. Vince was insistent on using the name Orpheus as a part of the characters name. Canterbury said that the name was special to Vince because a relative of his was named Orpheus. Jim Ross suggested they use the name Hank Goodwin…it was later tweaked to Henry Godwinn and Orpheus was used as the middle name to make the character’s initials, H.O.G.
Creative had sketches made up to define Henry Godwinn’s looks, which included overalls, a baseball cap, slop bucket and wear a dirty white tee shirt. Eventually, Vince requested that he needed some color, so they made him wear a yellow shirt to the ring. Shane McMahon was put in charge of filming Godwinn’s vignettes. They went to a small pig farm in Tennessee and paid the farmer 300 dollars to shoot vignettes all day on his farm. The location where Godwinn hailed from…Bitters, Arkansas was completely made up by Vince. Originally, McMahon envisioned Henry Godwinn as a heel, but he enjoyed the gimmick so much, McMahon felt he could become a modern day Hillbilly Jim for the WWF. Godwinn turned babyface and feuded the MIllion Dollar Corporation and Hunter Hearst Helmsley.
In 1996, at the request of Canterbury, his old tag team partner was brought into the company as a cousin of Henry O. Godwinn named Phineas I. Godwinn. Together, the Godwinns would be managed by Hillbilly Jim, Sunny and Uncle Cletus. After suffering a broken neck at the hands of the Legion of Doom in 1997, Canterbury was sidelined for several months. When he returned the Henry O. Godwinn gimmick was completely dropped.
You can read other Gimmick Table entries here