Agreed. Though he would really need to use (with permission) that amazing OSW version of the Bojack Horseman opening credits where it goes through a bunch of Ed Leslie's gimmicks!
In the early 2000s, the small wrestling company in my hometown brought in Disco Inferno for a match. Disco took the time to learn the college mascot in order to make fun of it and get heat. I will forever respect him for that
According to the Chris Jericho podcast, he had terrible diabetes and he had to eat every two hours. Harvey Wippleman would get called at 3 am from GG saying he needs turkey sandwiches right away.
Undertaker said he had no idea what to do at wrestlemania to fill the 15 minutes and deliberately made a very slow entry to eat into the match time, did it with Mabel as well then specifically asked for him to be in his ministry so he didn’t have to fight him after an earlier incident left him with a broken face.
I wasn't really an ECW fan 20 years ago, but I remember seeing Mike Awesome on a episode of ECW on TNN and being incredibly impressed. He looked huge, but he was flying around like a cruiserweight.
Disco Inferno was definitely an interesting and wacky gimmick, but I feel like Glenn played it like no one else could, if it was anyone else that played the character I feel like it would absolutely be forgotten to the sands of time.
It makes him being such an arrogant asshole these days all the more painful. If he wasn't so obsessed with being toxic in pretty much every possible way, he could be making easy money as a nostalgia act on shows like Joey Janella's Spring Break.
I absolutely agree. I don't know how I'd feel about Michaels as Inferno, but as messed up as Michaels got, he could probably make it work. You need someone who can be have a big personality and be over-the-top, while not be so much so that it doesn't work out.
Nah, Disco Inferno was a turn the channel moment every time he appeared, just embarassing. He'd fit in well in today's AEW, where such garbage is par for the course.
Disco Inferno apparently got voted "Best Gimmick" in the 1995 awards from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. I'm not sure if that speaks for how over he was with fans or how dire the gimmicks of that year were
He was a comedy tweener that year. For example, struggling, in-ring, to figure out how to apply his submission finisher. He even had to write notes to himself, and draw a diagram.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Also the fact that he basically kept hyping it up as like... the most amazing finisher ever, you've never seen anything like this. It'll totally change the face of wrestling. .... And it's a figure 4.
He was a fun goofball comedy heel. His personal views and views of wrestling now are beneath contempt, but he wasn't meant to be a top guy so it's hard to say the gimmick was any kind of failure.
Nice touch with "...in the history of our great sport" at the beginning. I remember seeing Road Block on Saturday Night and pretty sure his entrance music was a bunch of car horns honking, making it the best entrance theme.
Disco Inferno had enough elements of Glenn Gilberti's real personality that it made the character more likable. Because of that, everyone just knows him as Disco now. Great podcast with Konnan.
I mean, Glenn somehow was able to make a 70's disco dancer gimmick work in the late 90's. I think that in itself is commendable. Not to mention that he actually got super over with the gimmick at points.
I enjoyed Disco Inferno when I was a kid. Growing up, I facepalmed so hard when thinking they actually put title belts on an obvious comedy gimmick that was meant to bring the haha and nothing more. Hey, props to Gilbertti for having backstage stroke.
Robert Kellum worked dark matches for WCW as Gorgeous George III in 1997 and 98. The reason he stopped using the gimmick, was because Randy Savage bought the rights to the Gorgeous George gimmick. According to Kellum, the original intention was for Randy to give the Gorgeous George gimmick to his brother Leaping Lanny Poffo. Which Kellum says he had no issues with, as he believed Lanny would put as much effort into it as he did as The Genius, and Lanny had great respect for the original Gorgeous George. However when Randy brought his girlfriend Stephanie Bellars to TV and gave her the name, Kellum was upset and approached Eric Bischoff about it. Which is allegedly when they came up with The Maestro to get Kellum on TV.
Lanny Poffo was an underrated performer. He was a cruiserweight in a world of heavyweights! His performances as 'The Genius' were hilarious. But still, he was never able to step out of his brothers considerable shadow...
The next one. Yes - I also found Lanny extremely underrated. I might understand, that he wasn´t the guy with big muscles for Vince, but WCW payed him for quite some time - without using him on TV or houseshows...
Great call out!!! I was going to mention this but I decided to read the comment section first to see if anyone knew the real story, Thanks. The only part that was left out was that Rob was broken into the business to be GG 3 because of his lineage.
Everyone planning to say the same thing and the OG poster failed to mention that Kellum had gained some exposure working for Jim Cornette's Smokey Mountain Wrestling as Robbie Eagles and now and then for Jarrett Promotions USWA in Memphis.
Disco Inferno was cheesy, but played too well by Glenn to be on the list. Substitute anybody in the dungeon of doom except Giant, for an example of “worst gimmick”.
I'll never forget when Asshole Man showed up on reliving the war, it was one of the first instances when the snark started to come through in your commentary. I'll say the gimmick ended well too, with him almost getting his legs broken by the 4 horsemen and no one tried to help him; what a way to go out.
I’m a fan of the original Michael Wallstreet gimmick where he had a computer program that told him how to defeat opponents. I’d love to see a version of that nowadays where the winning strategy is always “hit your opponent with the laptop”.
Yeah, then he became a tax agent in WWF and the gimmick went to Terry Taylor, Ricky Morton, and Tommy Rich... And the three of them couldn't carry it off, even with the future Marlena(Terri Runnels as Alexandra York) as their manager...
@@BiggieTrismegistus That could be a brilliant gimmick! Imagine if their Titantron entrance video was AI generated images of them beating up legendary wrestlers and lifting non-existent titles.
There was only one gimmick that could get away with throwing frisbees into the crowd... And the fact that Leaping Lanny Poffo hand wrote a poem about his opponent for the match on them made each one truly a unique souvenir
I think why Disco worked is that not only is Glen a solid worker but he just seemed so darned earnest. He didn't seem like a guy suffering under a naff gimmick but one embracing it.
There's just certain gimmicks where, you look back at the gimmick and think, "This shouldn't work and it isn't going to work," and they get the correct guy for the job. I agree with Jim Cornette when he says that the reasons Mick Foley, Undertaker and Curt Hennig could get away with what they did was because they were the best guys for the Mankind, Dead man and Mr. Perfect gimmicks. Just couldn't have worked with anyone else. Disco is different in that Glenn, as you guys said, just felt in earnest and dedicated himself to the character. As WB said in the video, best to be in on the joke.
@@anonamatronExactly. How a gimmick is used and what the wrestler brings to it are way more important than the actual gimmick itself. Lots of successful wrestlers’ gimmicks - Undertaker, Hurricane, The New Day, Val Venis, Bray Wyatt, to name a few - could’ve been on a list like this if used differently
@@jimbrown5091 I never saw Mean Mark. I was watching probably just around the time the Undertaker started.. probably slightly after, and saw WWF first. I just thought Hulk Hogan was cool and the Royal Rumble VHS covers with the absolute mob of colorful wrestlers marching into the foreground made me want to see that so badly. The first one I ever rented was one of the first Survivor Series. Whatever the one with Andre the Giant's team vs. Ultimate Warrior's team was. My parents were super against me renting that nonsense but I kept asking and asking. I'm sure I'd seen WWF tv a little bit at that point because I definitely knew who the big stars like Hogan and Andre and Ultimate Warrior were. Mean Mark was before my time, but Undertaker was a cool villain for me as a kid.
Gimmicks like the Shark and Seven really showcased the dichotomy of the WCW creative at the time. That they could give someone a gimmick, recognize it was a failure, make the decision to pull it, allow the guy portraying the gimmick to publicly kill it to placate angry fans, then punish the wrestler for spitting on their creative team.
Near the end of his life he posted on the Wrestlecrap forums quite a bit and reminisced about some of his lame gimmicks and had fun with everyone about it all.
People like Disco Inferno are the perfect gimmick/character wrestlers that you often need (or even want) to have your fans stick to your program and become interest in every aspect of your company. Gilberti was good in the ring, solid charisma and was better on the mic then some bigger names. It's people like him who make the mid/undercard interesting and fun to watch while enjoying a snack (or beer) .
The best/worst part about the Maestro's "feud" with James Brown is that WCW did absolutely nothing to promote that James Brown was involved. They spent a ton of money to have him just show up at a PPV unannounced, so barely anyone even knew that Brown WAS there, let alone WHY he was there, and something that probably would have gotten them a ton of PPV buys went completely wasted.
I always liked Vinnie Vegas when I was a kid. Liked it even more when many years later I heard Nash say in an interview that he based the character on Steve Martin's character, Vinny, in the movie My Blue Heaven, another thing I loved when I was a kid.
The Disco Inferno character wasn't created to be a main event player. It was a comedic character designed for the mid card, and it was a good character for that purpose. Glenn Gilberti was a good wrestler and made the character work.
I say this in a lot of videos where he is mentioned: he would be looked at a lot more favorably today if he just shut up. Case in point, before he decided that the world needed to know his opinions, the same people who now call him a joke called him "an underrated gem" or things like that.
Roadblock had amazing theme music, made him appear like a badass. Sounded like something out of SWAT Kats. KISS Demon ended up becoming a guilty pleasure for me, probably thanks to how straight Dale Torborg played it and legit tried to salvage the gimmick. Prince Iaukea trying to be Prince Rogers Nelson also grew on me, it was the one time in his career that Iaukea was actually interesting and his Purple Rain knockoff music legit rocked.
I allways thought the bootyman was a disco gimmick like disco inferno, but the character was just about some guy who shaked his booty, and was Hogans budy.
I actually enjoyed Barry Darsow's golfer gimmick. Sure it was one of those "occupation" gimmicks but it was kind of unique. He'd always bring out a mini golf set for his opponent to try, if they got a hole in one they get "the right to wrestle" Barry, but he'd always pearl harbour them anyways. OSW Boy Stable material.
The wrestlers didn't laugh their asses off. Patrice O'Neal, Bill Burr, Jim Norton and Anthony Cumia did laugh their asses off watching the Shockmaster debut.
The thing about Big Josh is that it wasn't necessarily the lumberjack gimmick itself that was the issue. Wrestling's had a ton of successful lumberjack gimmicks in the past, like the LeDuc brothers in the territorial days and John Nord & Scott Norton in the AWA. But they were big surly brawlers that had very 'street fight' style matches to go with their gimmicks. Matt Borne was a great wrestler and wrestled as such, which didn't really support a lumberjack gimmick.
Am I the only one that thinks The Big Show should have adopted a “Paul Bunyan” gimmick, complete with a big blue ox to escort him to the ring? Yeah? Ok, just checking.
WCW had a bunch of bizarre characters didn't they. Disco Inferno was a gimmick that worked though up to more than one off. Hector Guerrero would have been good as Eddy and Chavo's partners.
Right it's that the smarks online force narratives that anyone who didn't do all the moves and work rates somehow meant they weren't over The same ones who kept pushing Hbk wasn't a draw during the new generation era . I'm glad for a non smark channels like wrestling bros who can separate the truth from a talent he didn't care for and how over they are It's very refreshing
@@JH-so5kt Not up for debate? PMSL, you're trying to rewrite history. Disco was most definitely not over with many crowds, in fact, he had the wrong kind of heat often, the kind of heat where people just have no interest in watching your match .
I never realized Ed Leslie was the Disciple and I thought the Disciple actually at least looked quite good when watching WCW originally. Also Disco Inferno was indeed exactly that type of sympathy jobber that shouldn't work but did, in part to how he was portrayed.
I had a great experience many years ago when I got to have dinner with Barry Darsow and Bill Eadie after they'd worked a local indy show. During the late-90s they didn't speak for a few years before reconnecting, so Bill had never heard about any of Barry's WCW escapades, like Blacktop Bully, the "King of the Road" match, or "Hole In One" Darsow. I'd bring that stuff up and tell Barry I was just glad that WCW had him around on TV, and Bill would just shake his head and say "Man, I'm glad I missed all that!" 🤣 And Barry would be like "Yeah, that's when we weren't talkin' for a while," but he let me tell the stories and I could tell he got a real kick out of hearing a fan's perspective on it. And then he'd jump in with the stuff I didn't know, like him and Dustin getting fired for blading during the KotR match. Barry: "So they told us to get color, an' then they fired us for gettin' color!" Bill: "....Sounds like WCW." 🤣 Barry was cracking up when I mentioned the golfer gimmick. I told him that was the one gimmick of his I hated, and he started laughing so hard pretending to be surprised. "You HATED it?! That was my favorite gimmick of all time!" 🤣 He claimed it came about because he'd recently gotten into golf in real life and it gave him an excuse to show up to shows late and not have to get changed. "I'd just walk in and work in the stuff I had on, it was great!" Great memories, love those guys forever.
@@TheImapotato He was laughing when he said it so it was probably just a joke BUT either way it was a great story well-told. That night had a lot to do with me finally deciding to try and get into wrestling so it's a night I'll always remember fondly.
@@TheImapotato Way closer to the end of the ride than the beginning but I appreciate the support! That event was around 2008 and I broke in 2009 so a lot's happened since, nothing grand but it's been fun. Some of it's up on my channel, not including stuff that's been lost to time or I otherwise don't own the rights to. Never touched a pill yet!
I loved Roadblock all because he brought that barricade to the ring with a blinking hazard flasher on it, I also liked his finishing move where he got on the ring apron and clothesline flips inside the ring on his opponent
i always liked disco inferno. he was a fun character. that 70s dude was alright too. especially when he tried to pick up whatever girl he was interviewing on his couch and she just tried to get away from him. that part of his gimmick hasn't aged well, but it was still funny seeing him get shot down every time.
I never comment on any wrestling review videos for any channel but I can’t stay silent: Disco Inferno was one of the most memorable characters of that era. He had the stage presence, charisma, and athletic ability to pull it off. I agree with you, I loved his character (even when I hated him).
It was a horrible gimmick that worked because of the wrestler. Unpopular opinion: the undertaker gimmick is as horrible as the Dungeon of Doom. Mark made that work. No one else could have
I liked him. His gimmick was fun but not overbearing. He was a guy who liked disco music and was fine in the ring. He wasn't a wrestler where the gimmick was so over the top it took away from the wrestler. Examples include the Red Rooster, Road Block, Skinner the Alligator man, Issac Yankem to name a few.
@@Bizzle2K Y’know what? You’re right. The first thing that crossed my mind as I watched Luchasaurus vs. Darby Allin at All Out this year was “Man, I can’t tell these two guys apart. They just look, talk, and wrestle the exact same!”
Wow I never heard WWF made Awesome an offer in 2000. Seeing as how they didn't use him worth a damn in and after the Invasion I wonder if it would have been any different had he came earlier but imagining a competitive Awesome vs Kane or Taker match....damn.
It sucks that he was stuck in a rock and a hard place. Either take the bigger money without any idea what WCW would do to you, or take the safer bet and get destroyed by Vince and the WWF/E
There’s a guy with a Pro Golfer gimmick at a local promotion I go to. He’s legit one of my favorites. He plays a Shooter McGavin type heel with a Caddy who cheats and everything. He’s also a great wrestler to boot. The man can make the gimmick
as for maestro i understand he actually did play the piano in those scenes for real. he wasn't just moving his fingers in time with the music being played (which actually believe it or not is just as hard if not harder) so apparently he had some piano talent
It's also worth mentioning that ''Brad Armstrong'' and ''Matt Borne'' were second generation wrestlers. 1970s nostalgia was pretty big during the 1990s, which is one of the many reasons why the ''Disco Inferno'' gimmick worked. If it hadn't been for the fact that ''Glenn Gilbertti'' was a good wrestler and had such excellent mic skills.... The gimmick would not have lasted as long as it did.
I don't think Rob Kellum/The Maestro gets enough credit. Solid ring worker, he made that gimmick work and the fact that he was trusted to be in a segment with the legendary James Brown says a lot about him.
I'm a huge sucker for ridiculous gimmicks. I'd love to see a Yeti callback in a modern wrestling show in which a manager showed up week after week with a big old sarcophagus and teased whatever was inside. Eventually it would open to reveal "the Mum-Ay," a guy dressed in an Abominable Snowman costume. The Mum-Ay would then job out for a few weeks before being repackaged. No explanation or further reference to the character.
I actually found a signed and dedicated photograph of Kellum as Gorgeous George III from 1993 last year in a random hole-in-the-wall thrift store in North Carolina, lol. One of my coolest thrift store finds to this day.
In 2001 after Road Dogg was fired from WWF, him and his brother (Steve Armstrong) opened a wrestling school and an indy promotion (Southern Pro Wrestling) in northwest Florida. I was one of their trainees. After I completed my training, Road Dogg pitched a gimmick to me where I would wear a skeleton mask and call myself "Skeletor." Being 6'7", 200 lbs at the time, I feel this may have been a rib on my size.
I loved Arachnaman back in 1990 ish on WCW Worldwide! (Very late night on ITV in the UK) And 'The Medic', who was usually to be seen getting squashed by Sting 😀
The highlight of Roadblock's career is that he had a chance to end Goldberg's undefeated streak. While Goldberg was still in his first half a dozen matches or so, Roadblock slammed him to the mat and had him dead to rights. He did not follow up with a pin cover, however, and Goldberg made a comeback and pinned him with a jackhammer a minute or two later.
I was a young kid who had just begun watching wrestling when Big Josh was around, and he was one of my favorites at the time. I liked him so much as a kid that I became a total Doink mark when I found out that he was the one portraying him.
One of the funniest things I saw on WCW TV was the Nitro Girls doing a routine in the ring and Alex Wright wandering into the shot doing his one and only dance.
Request: create a storyline of what could have happened if the Shockmaster’s debut went perfectly. No doubt fans would have flocked to a guy in a bedazzled storm trooper helmet.
