Were back in the Wrestling Salvage Yard for the Isaac Yankem DDS gimmick!
Isaac Yankem DDS
This wasn’t the first gimmick of Kane in his career but it was his first on WWE TV. Personally, I liked the name of Mike Unabomb. It sounds like a wrestler from the Champions of the Galaxy wrestling board game.
Anyway, this evil dentist gimmick was a short-term menace until Mayor Glen Jacobs got something better. It’s not unusual for wrestlers to change gimmicks throughout their career.
I believe it’s that he went from a mediocre cartoony gimmick to a great comic book/horror movie gimmick.
It’s not as if his style changed dramatically but the ring approach that brought him to national TV popped more as Kane.
Isaac Yankem DDS was brought in as Lawler’s dentist. This guy was a psychopath with bad teeth, so he was probably a black–market doctor.
If anything, it shows how tough The King is to get his teeth worked on by this dude. I also think that Lawler took advantage of Jack Tunney’s lax governance because too many weirdos and suspected criminals ended up on the roster at the time.
As I’ve noted before, under Tunney WWE had evil clowns, a naked giant, a violent ex-convict, a Mantaur, a deadman—the list goes on!
It’s also a testament to just how odd the New Generation could be even with the change in direction.
Salvaging Yankem
This is one of those very specific gimmicks where I don’t see being salvageable. Like there was no need for an evil dentist in the first place.
If WWE just needed a maniacal dentist then it should’ve been done during the Hulkamania period. Plus, Dr. Giggles came out in 1992! Run it then!
Ok, it’s 1995 and we have an almost seven–foot–tall dentist here. There was also an evil clown and a tax man. Call that trio the American Nightmares and have them managed by psychologist Father James Mitchell.
Make a theme of it. Don’t just have Lawler bring in dentists with revoked licenses as it fits the direction of the company at the time.
Sometimes it’s nice to find an onion ring in your fries while other times it just ruins things. Isaac Yankem DDS was definitely the bad onion ring in the New Generation’s medium fry.
Salvage Potential: Low
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