Stand-ins used in wrestling

[Loss]

From today's WON:

 

--In the Smackdown spoilers, the wrestler doing a run-in identified as Beth Phoenix was actually Nattie Neidhart, who debuts on tomorrow night's show. The two look similar, which was one of the reasons there was a question of bringing her up right now because of the idea one Beth Phoenix is good, but two of them makes Beth Phoenix less special. Neidhart has a lot of experience since he's been working since her teens and was by far the best of the women wrestlers in developmental.

So WWE used Nattie Neidhart as a fake Beth Phoenix.

 

I know of a case in Memphis where they used a fake Jimmy Hart at ringside in a LLT match when he had already bolted to the WWF.

 

Are there any other cases of stand-ins used where they tried to pass it off as the real thing?

[Loss]

I should also clarify that I am not referring to angles, like the fake Sting and the fake Undertaker, or DDP dressing up as La Parka. I'm referring to cases where the promotion attempted to pass off the person as someone when it was actually something else.

 

I guess there was WCW billing Atlantis at Lizmark.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Uh, Loss, I don't think he meant they used a stand-in. He meant that whoever wrote the SD spoilers misidentified Nattie as Beth.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

But if you're looking for an example, how about WCW putting Tom Zenk under a mask at Slamboree '93 and pretending it was Shane Douglas?

[Loss]

Well how about that.

 

Still a fun thread idea, I suppose.

[Bix]

I'm not clear on the full details of the Tommy H./Jimmy Hart deal.

 

I've read that Hart was already suspended to some degree/barred from ringside after pouring flour on Lance Russell's head. Was Tommy H. on TV before the Coliseum card?

[goodhelmet]

Would the idea of using a stuntman in place of Sting count? I am talking about the atrocious match against Vampiro in the summer of 2000 where "Sting" was lit on fire and fell.

[Eduardo]

Didn't they have someone else play Octagon a couple of times in AAA? I remember hearing that somewhere, but can't remember where.

[Guest BilJim2]

Didn't Kerry Von Erich pretend to be the Ultimate Warrior after UW had a heart attack?

 

I'm sorry, I'll stop now.

[Guest onlxn]

Seriously, though, did the WWF *never* use a Warrior stand-in? I saw a Superstars segment a year or two back where the Warrior ran in on an Undertaker interview, and it really, really didn't look like Hellwig...

[Bix]

Didn't they have someone else play Octagon a couple of times in AAA? I remember hearing that somewhere, but can't remember where.

They definitely used Winners Dos as a stand-in Abismo Negro.

 

I guess that Pentagon Black as Sasuke the Great when STG needed to team w/ Masao Orihara (who normally played the gimmick) might count.

[Jingus]

It may seem a bit obvious, but would the several hundred different Doinks count?

[MikeCampbell]

Not really a 'stand in' but I recall hearing once that a tape of a Terry Funk promo got lost somehow, so Dick Slater cut the promo doing a perfect impression of Funk, and they aired the audio over some old footage and nobody knew the difference.

[Guest LShunter]

It may seem a bit obvious, but would the several hundred different Doinks count?

Kim Chee would also fall into this category too.

[Tim Evans]

Lucha does this all the tim. Especially with Mistico since he has about 2-3 matches a day. And like Bix Said, AAA ran a angle last year using a fake Aibsmo Negro because the real one was in Rehab.

[Guest Mykill]

A lot of people might still think that The Patriot on the indy scene is Del Wilkes.

[Guest culotron]

Lucha does this all the tim. Especially with Mistico since he has about 2-3 matches a day. And like Bix Said, AAA ran a angle last year using a fake Aibsmo Negro because the real one was in Rehab.

Makes sense. They hire a bunch of wrestlers with a similar style and look to mistico. I could see Astro Boy or Flash usurping him on low end shows.

[Marty]

Masked Tom Zenk as Shane Douglas.

 

Marty Jannetty as spirit rising Undertaker.

[tomk]

Trying to remember if masked Jimmy Golden was supposed to be Hogan or Sid. But either way.

[Indikator]

Are you talking about the fake masked men in 1994 WCW during the Butcher turn?

[MikeCampbell]

What about Brad Armstrong as Mr. R in Georgia?

[Loss]

That's an angle.

 

I was thinking more of cases where they had unmasked wrestlers pretending to be other unmasked wrestlers, but maybe cases like that haven't really existed.

 

Like announcers referring to someone as Barry Windham throughout a match in an attempt to fool an audience into thinking it's him, when it's actually Dan Spivey in the ring.

 

I guess those are few and far between.

[Bix]

Like announcers referring to someone as Barry Windham throughout a match in an attempt to fool an audience into thinking it's him, when it's actually Dan Spivey in the ring.

This didn't actually happen, did it?

[Guest KÄSE]

I'm stunned there hasn't been a single mention of Rick Bogner & Glen Jacobs as the fake Razor Ramon & Diesel.

 

The classical case, much writing has been done about it on the internets - maybe too much considering the silliness of the subject. But I always thought the standard argument that "Vince tried to separate gimmicks from the wrestlers who played them and failed" is kind of misleading. Wrestling characters are different from wrestling gimmicks, in that a "character" is the package of a certain wrestler doing a certain gimmick.

 

Think of the Bond franchise. Pierce Brosnan isn't a stand-in for the James Bond character, or a "fake James Bond" compared to say Sean Connery or George Lazenby. He's just doing a "Pierce Brosnan's James Bond" character, which is different from the "Sean Connery's James Bond" character, even though they are both doing the James Bond gimmick. Similarly, what Daniel Craig is now doing with the gimmick is drastically different from the "Roger Moore's James Bond" character and this fact is all-but-explicitly acknowledged even in kayfabe, yet it goes over really well with an audience arguably a lot more sophisticated than the wrestling audience.

 

There are a lof of stand-ins in wrestling in this sense. JBL is doing a modified Million Dollar Man gimmick, which itself is essentially the original Mr. McMahon gimmick. Any number of wrestlers from Mutoh to CM Punk to Akira Hokuto have done a Great Kabuki gimmick. Umaga is a nearly verbatim Kamala. The only problem with the fake Razor & Diesel angle was that the gimmicks themselves were pretty bad to begin with, and Bogner and Jacobs are/were horrible professional wrestlers.

[sek69]

Actually I'm fairly certain the fake Razor/Diesel gimmicks happened because they had a relationship with AAA at the time. Vince saw how they put different people in gimmicks when the originals leave and decided to try it.

 

Also they had to show they were still using the characters after Hall and Nash left due to the lawsuit that was pending.