In the world of professional wrestling, sometimes wrestlers just have a natural connection with the audience. Look no further than WWE’s current success with LA Knight. He’s older, a former Impact Wrestling guy, and has a lot of factors going against him. Yet, the fans love him, he looks cool, and the man oozes charisma.
However, not everyone is as lucky as LA Knight, and not every company has a fanbase like the WWE. In Impact Wrestling, for example, there have been many wrestlers that have gotten between the ropes over the years that have tried so hard to be cool and get over but failed.
10 Tyrus
After Tyrus left the WWE as The Funkasauraus, he decided to start taking himself more seriously. He aligned himself with EC3 and became his muscle of sorts. While he was more tolerable in TNA than anywhere else, he still wasn’t cool.
Tyrus tried to act intense and badass, but it just didn’t work. Not only did fans not buy it due to his look, but it’s even harder to buy it when he stumbles around the ring and is clearly not a force in the ring. At least he didn’t become a world champion or anything like that.
9 Bobby Fish
Bobby Fish signed to Impact Wrestling in 2022, fresh off high-profile stints in AEW and WWE. While the company hoped that the former Undisputed Era member would pose as a credible world title challenger in the future.
Instead, fans just didn’t buy Fish on his own, with his debut and a brief time in Impact Wrestling being panned. He tried to come off as cool, but most onlookers just didn’t care. By early 2023, he was gone.
8 Shannon Moore
Shannon Moore has had a couple of different stints over the years in Impact Wrestling. Arguably his most famous run was from 2010 to 2012, debuting on the show’s first attempt at going head-to-head with Monday Night Raw.
Moore was the leader of Ink Inc., a stable that was about tattoos. If that sounds inventive or interesting, that’s because it wasn’t. In fact, it was the exact opposite, they were incredibly boring and uncool.
7 EC3
Just to be clear, EC3 was a great wrestler for the majority of his Impact Wrestling stint. He was able to put on incredible matches, including his infamous David vs. Goliath clash with Rockstar Spud. Furthermore, he was a good talker and had an alright look.
That being said, a lot of what EC3 did came off as trying too hard. Furthermore, just about everything he did after leaving in 2018 was rough, and made a lot of his prior work age poorly as well.
6 Sinn Bodhi
Being weird isn’t a personality or a gimmick, no matter how hard Sinn Bodhi has tried. If you don’t remember his stint in Impact, you’re likely not alone. For a lot of his stint from 2003 to 2005 was in the Disciples of the New Church stable.
While their feud with Raven and The Gathering was fun, Sinn Bodhi just wasn’t fun out on his own. Whenever your entire gimmick is looking and acting strange, you don’t have much lasting power. Especially whenever you’re not good enough between the ropes to cover those deficiencies.
5 Tito Ortiz
Admittedly it might be a bit of a stretch to call Tito Ortiz an Impact wrestler. However, he has made many appearances in the company over the years. First debuting in 2005, he returned in 2013 to join the Aces and Eights stable.
That debut was supposed to look cool but went down as one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments in wrestling history. Ortiz tried to look cool, to the applause of nobody, as the crowd was dead silent. That’s essentially the only thing the former UFC star is remembered for in TNA.
4 Robbie E
Alright, look, the early 2010s were a weird time looking at it in hindsight. One of the most popular shows on television was Jersey Shore, and Bro Culture was still around its peak. As a result, the BroMans were born.
One-half of the group was Robbie E, who wasn’t bad in the ring necessarily. With a different look or gimmick, he would’ve been fine. But playing an annoying bro character who is supposed to be cool but looks like a dork wasn’t it.
3 Jeff Jarrett
Jeff Jarrett had a somewhat weird time in Impact over the years due to his role as owner. While he eventually sold portions and later the entire company, he, alongside his dad Jerry Jarrett, was bankrolling the promotion for years.
For that reason, Jarrett spent a lot of time around the main event scene and world title picture. Look, he’s a legend, and still entertaining to this day. That being said, one can’t deny that he wasn’t nearly as cool as a lot of the figures in the main event picture whenever he was.
2 Jessie Godderz
The other half of The BroMans, Jessie Godderz, was living the gimmick. Before even becoming a professional wrestler he was a reality television star, previously being on the show Big Brother.
When in Impact Wrestling, he essentially played himself as a member of the frat-style tag team The BroMans. Like his partner, Godderz just wasn’t interesting or cool. The entire team felt like they were trying way too hard.
1 Hulk Hogan
There were few people throughout all of human history that were as uncool as Hulk Hogan was in Impact Wrestling. Seen as the turning point (for the worse) in the company’s history, the aging legend signed with them in 2009.
From then on, despite barely wrestling himself, Impact became the Hogan show. It was just hard to take him, or the company seriously at all in this period of time. Everything revolved around Hogan, which was the case in the 80s and 90s as well. The issue is, it was the 2010s.