2006-08-18 - 1:52 a.m.

A rose by any other name would smell just as shite. When it comes to naming wrestlers, Vince McMahon would do well to disregard Shakespeare's advice. A cool name won't get you over, but it's a start. Take the Big Show, for example. This is a seven foot giant of a man with a degree of charisma and sufficient crowd-rousing ability on the mic. He's going to be - ha! - huge, right? Well, yes and no... He'll certainly balloon his way into popular legend, but he won't be mentioned in awed tones by the smart marks in the same breath as yer Benoits, Angles, Malenkos, Guerreos, Harts, Flairs, Funks and Thez's. What do you notice about that list? Surnames, man. Respect is hard to come by in a business founded on a lie, but if you have something approaching a bonafide surname then you've got a puncher's chance. Hell, Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper were not the names their mothers called them, but at least they had resonance. They were geographically lodged gimmick names but at least they held water. Hogan was chosen to represent the Irish minority, and the part of Rowdy Roddy Piper was played by juniour Canadian bagpipe champion Roderick Toombs. Never mind that he didn't even attempt a Scottish accent - Rowdy Roddy Piper was a cool name and Toombs had charisma most can only dream of.

Back to the Big Show: what sort of name is that? At best it's a nickname. Paul "The Big Show" Wight would have a certain ring about it. It's still stupid but marginally less stupid than having it as his actual name. What are they trying to tell us? I can almost work with them - Rob Van Dam was know as The Whole Fucking Show in ECW and I get that it's a take on that, but c'mon... how can somebody be called The Big Show. Andre the Giant might not seem like the most exciting soubriquet ever devised but it's an infinately superior name for a wrestler - it does what it says on the tin but also clues you in that the guy's from France. USA! USA! There's that xenophobic hint to boo him right there in the name - perfect! Andre was hopeless in the ring compared to the Big Slow (tee hee!) - he could barely move and even his selling point was bogus - standing around 6'10 Andre would stand on boxes during interviews to make him seem more like his height as billed. The Big Show is actually seven feet tall. If it wasn't for his self-inflicted gut, his theme music - "There's gonna be a big bad show tonight-oh!" - and his fucking stupid name, he might have actually been a legend of the squared circle. It's this bizarre trend of the WWE to tar and feather its employees with ridiculous nom de guerres that render so many of them chumps. 'Paul "The Big Show" Wight!' is surely better than just calling the poor fat bastard the Big Show?

I'm not sure when this masochistic trend began but I first noticed it in the mid nineties (when the WWF was in a trough - coincidence?) and Brian "Kona Crush" Adams lost the first part of his appellation and became, simply, "Crush". It sounds like something you add water to before drinking. Back in the day you had behemoths like Dick the Bruiser, Killer Kowalski, Buiser Brody and Abdullah the Butcher. Would any of them have struck such fear into those smoky fans if they were called merely Bruiser, Killer or Butcher? "Ladies and gentleman, weighing 400lbs, he is the madman from the Sudan, this is... Butcher!" No, it's piss-weak. "Abdullah" has that ring to it - the foreign madman, the crazy menace, the extra ring to it that you need if you want to get the crowd a-poppin'. Ric Flair even gets a nickname - The Nature Boy - Wooooooo! Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Triple H, the heir to the throne, gets three of the fuckers - he's "The Game", "The Cerebral Assassin" and, lately, the self-appointed "King of Kings"! The first of these sounds stupid, much like the Big Show (which is like calling a footballer "The World Cup"), but the latter is OK and the fans can cope with Triple H, The Game, the Cerebral Assassin and - ahem - the King of Kings all being the same person, so why the need to belittle everyone else? It's the same dehuminisng effect as Supermarkets only putting your first name on the badge. Surely this multi-name tomfoolery is not just because playing 'The Game' involves shagging the boss's daughter?

They've still not learned their lesson. David Batista - a guy with a certain look but not much ability (Goldberg, anyone?) "Batista". Why? Do they really think we as fans can't cope with two names? Is "David" thought too woosy? The same thing happened to Bill Goldberg. The paranoid egomaniac in me thinks he would have done better if he'd been allowed to keep his forename as in this post-kayfabe age we know that he's a human being, as opposed to some bionbic superhero from outer space like the Ultimate Warrior, so why shy from telling us that his friends call him David? I'm apparently watching a product that considers me so stupid that I can't cope with the idea of cheering somebody with more that a mono-name. It's easier for them to fit single names on t-shirts and it's easier for me to whine about stuff like this on here than do anyting productive with my life, so fuck it, wer're both winners.

Mike Awesome... now that was a cool name. Edit: Look, I know there are guys like The Rock who flout the rule I'm espousing, but they are the exception to the rule. Let us not forget that he started out as Rocky Maivia. Only when he was sufficently incendary did he shorten his name to The Rock - and what a great promo that was. Mick Foley pissed about with various names to suit his multiple personalities: Cactus Jack, Mankind and Dude Love. Would he have made it if he was simply billed as "Jack" without the Cactus? Discounting Foley's natural charisma and mic ability (cos I can), "Jack" just isn't the same as Cactus Jack. Cactus Jack tells you that this is a wildman from the desert who lives off road kill and doesn't care about personal hygiene. Cactus Jack will fuck you up - Jack will fix your bathroom sink. There's so many examples: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin is a lot better than just "Austin" isn't it? It tells you something about the character as well as having a lovely ring to it. I could go on about this all day - why did the rubbish beardy Gene Snitsky suddenly just become "Snitsky". Why? Why? Never mind the fact that he was shite, why is it necessary to brand him merely as a surname - where's the logic? Apply logic to wrestling, though, and you're fucked, so I'll stop here.

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