Posted on by Editor
At the start of 1997 The Honky Tonk Man started a search for his protégé. The story goes that Glenn ‘Disco Inferno’ Gilbertti, who was at the time reluctant to resign with the WCW was going to be in the role. In the end, however, Gilbertti signed a new deal leaving the WWF little time to obtain a new protégé for Honky Tonk.
It was Billy Gunn who got the nod to fill the role. Gunn was at this point a midcarder devoid of any direction. Having been with the company since 1993, and achieving success as one half of ‘The Smokin’ Gunns’, an injury had put him off television for a while and the WWF appeared to having nothing for him and he was repackaged as Rockabilly.
The Honky Tonk Man began showing up on WWF TV promising to unveil his new protégé at the ‘Revenge of the Taker’ event. He promised he would shock the world and that the announcement would change the landscape of wrestling and there was nothing Vince McMahon could do about it. It’s fair to say that this proved not to be the case.
The rushed way that Honky made the announcement – a clip I’ve unfortunately been unable to locate – showed that perhaps he knew that the gimmick would bomb. And boy did it. During his run as Rockabilly, he had a short-lived feud with “The Real Double J” Jesse James. The gimmick amounted to very little and on an episode of ‘Shotgun Saturday Night’, James, realising both of their careers were going nowhere, suggested that they became a tag team. Gunn agreed and smashed a guitar over the Honky Tonk Man’s head to solidify their new alliance.
The rest, of course, is history with this team known as The New Age Outlaws became one of the most popular teams of the Attitude Era. Could the gimmick have worked had Glenn Gilbertti been unveiled as Honky’s protégé? Perhaps. He certainly had more charisma than Gunn and was probably equal with him in terms of being a good worker. He also would have had more buy-in on the gimmick and likely to have done more to make it work. Gunn, as a last-minute replacement, was never going to care as much for the gimmick.
As for the gimmick itself, it further demonstrates that what works once doesn’t necessarily work the second time. Everything that Honky had to make the gimmick work in the 80s, Gunn lacked this time around. An Elvis impersonator character should never have worked but with a heel turn and by angering the crowd by thanking them after each performance, Wayne Ferris made it work so much that he was one of the biggest WWF bad guys of the 80s.
More evidence, not that any is really needed, that a gimmick that worked once doesn’t mean it will necessarily work the second or third time around.
