Masked personas got known wrestlers have always irked me to a great degree but deep down I’m on board for it. Really, anything that can advance a storyline without being hacky. Hokey in wrestling is something I deal with: scenarios or spots that only make sense in wrestling.
Hokey but cool masked gimmicks that come to mind are Dusty Rhodes as the Midnight Rider, John Cena as Juan Cena, and Hulk Hogan as Mr. America.
A modern gimmick that flirts with this approach is the long-running Suicide gimmick in IMPACT Wrestling.
IMPACT Wrestling’s Suicide Gimmick: Is It More Tiger Mask or More Midnight Rider
Suicide is an unfortunately named persona used by present and former X-Division wrestlers. Whether it’s as Suicide or Manik, very few wrestlers just remained under the mask for a lengthy period.
If anything, they portrayed Suicide for a couple of months before someone else took it over or the gimmick was put on ice. I always felt that it could not only be IMPACT’s gimmick to prepare a new superstar of the X-Division but could also just be passed on in doing so.
This character technically should move from person to person when a new star feels they can run the division without Suicide. The story of the mask could be much more—and it started off like that.
From Video Game to In-Ring
Suicide was introduced as a character from the TNA IMPACT game in late 2008. While players went through the character’s storyline in the game, those ties weren’t there when he was living, breathing wrestler on television.
If anything, it was obviously one of the X-Division regulars or someone not as high on the totem pole under the mask. While the character was cool and everyone depicted him differently from their natural wrestling style, there really wasn’t anything to get you engaged in the character.
What I felt it needed was a rival. I’ve always liked when high flyers had a rival or regular opponent: CIMA had Magnum TOKYO, Dragon Kid had Darkness Dragon, Tiger Mask had Black Tiger, Dynamite Kid, and “Tiger Hunter” Kuniaki Kobayashi.
Suicide could’ve done with a rival and actually, TJ Perkins’ Manik-version of the character would’ve worked with more gear adjustments.
Hell, if Perkins had a second student, he could just split the gimmick between them—one becomes Manik and the other becomes Suicide.
Suicide is the X-Division’s Midnight Rider
Of course, it’s not Perkins’ gimmick but he’d be the best starting point for an IMPACT legend that should’ve never been shelved in the first place. As it is, I’d say that the gimmick turned out more like the Midnight Rider.
We all knew it was TJ Perkins under the mask, everything pointed to that being the case. It’s just like when Dusty or Hogan wore a mask but you knew it was them.
Well, with Hogan that was part of the bit. This was just palette swap Hogan with a mask on.
The difference with Suicide/Manik is that we’ve got full-body costume action going on. It could’ve been any similarly-sized wrestler but context clues pointed to Perkins. He wanted his belt back but he couldn’t challenge for it.
Of course, he was going to run it back in the black and red.
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