So, the El Matador salvage didn’t work out well. Let’s look at another gimmick that was between the lateness of Glacier and overly gimmickiness—for its time—of El Matador. We’ve got “Pirate” Paul Burchill.
“Pirate” Paul Burchill Terror of Thursday Night SmackDown
In the early 2000s, Paul Burchill was something of a phenomenon in the UK indies as a regular part of the Frontier Wrestling Alliance, England’s biggest indy of that period. At 6’4 and shy of 250lbs, the muscular Burchill was athletic and had the potential to burn. Not only that but when he signed to WWE in 2005—three years after his debut—his in-ring style just required some polish for the WWE style.
Then again, this was 2000s WWE and after some time in OVW, he was regularly wrestling in developmental and on TV for the SmackDown brand. Initially, he was tagging with William Regal—because every UK wrestler that came through SmackDown tagged with the former NXT authority—before splitting off and becoming a pirate.
That’s right, in 2006, WWE went with a cartoony gimmick and Paul Burchill was the pick. In the same way that Vince McMahon loves his hillbillies, I love pirates. I thought Jean-Pierre LaFitte was pretty cool but later saw that he was out of time with where WWE was heading during the New Generation.
The same can be said about Burchill in the 2000s, the SmackDown brand was more in-ring action-oriented than RAW’s product and gimmicks were giving way to personalities in WWE as a whole. There were still some gimmicks around such as The Boogey Man, Mordecai, and the like but there was a move away from character gimmicks or occupational gimmicks.
Even the supernatural aspects of Kane and The Undertaker were dialed back noticeably. That’s why it was weird when SmackDown got a whole ass pirate complete with rope swinging entrance. At least it was weird if you weren’t following pop culture and knew that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was hot at the moment.
All of that aside, Pirate Paul had some feuds on SmackDown before the gimmick was tossed aside as Vince McMahon expected Burchill to act more like PCO’s pirate character and not Johnny Depp’s. The thing is, people were actually in this odd, out-of-place gimmick and if it worked, let it run its course.
Salvaging Pirate Paul
This is an easier one for sure. Paul Burchill’s pirate character was pretty salvageable in that it could’ve transitioned into a comedy character and been featured more on RAW than SmackDown. On the blue brand, Burchill’s character just seemed busy and a bit too much in a brand of badasses, grapplers, and high flyers.
Over on the red brand, you had your badasses and grapplers but the sports entertainment approach was heavier. The gimmick probably would’ve gotten even more traction there—especially if WWE managed to get some cross-promotion on a Pirates movie. Hell, if he had a better career in WWE as Pirate Paul, we probably would’ve gotten appearances from him at WrestleMania in Orlando and Tampa.
I mean, we were seeing Doink often for years on throwback shows and he achieved nothing in WWE. Actually, Doink was more of a Hulkamania gimmick than anything. Overall, this was a gimmick that had some appeal with the crowd who knew what creative was going for but was shot down because the boss was clueless about what Pirate Paul was doing.
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