I am willing to bet that no one save for one or two of you reading this even remember this lame gimmick from the early 90’s. About the time when Steve Austin was making his entrance into WCW, a much more well known grappler (at the time) was also coming in, a guy by the name of Billy Jack Haynes.
Now for those of you who don’t remember Billy Jack Haynes, he was a minor star in the WWF for about a year before he ran into trouble with Vince McMahon. He would come out to the ring in a goofy looking hat that looked a lot like the one the Undertaker used to wear. In fact, my friend used to swear to me that the hat the Taker wore was, in fact, one of Haynes’ that was pulled from the WWF stockroom.
Haynes didn’t have much of a personality, and his entire WWF gimmick was built around the fact that he was from Portland, Oregon, where he worked for the old Pacific Northwest promotion. Of course, this didn’t get him over with anyone but the people from that area, and he promptly disappeared.
Haynes was left unemployed until WCW came a callin’. They put a hood on Haynes and had him go to the ring under an Executioner’s mask. Yes, he actually wore TWO masks to the ring. He’d bring a big hatchet, that was used to slice people’s heads off, I guess.
Once he got an opponent knocked down, he would place a mask over THEIR head, ala an old time execution. He would then climb to the top rope and hit them with a flying chop to the throat.
The gimmick was stupid and everyone, even the idiots running WCW at the time, knew it. It was killed off within a few shows. As far as I know, that was Haynes’ last run in any US promotion.