Brian Damage
A gimmick is something that is intended to hook the attention of fans to a wrestler. They may be outrageous or steeped more in reality, whatever the case may be…some have succeeded and many others have failed. The Gimmick Table takes a look at the origins of some of your favorite and not so favorite gimmicks of professional wrestlers.
Today we browse the gimmick of Kwang
When Juan Rivera came to the WWF in 1993, he was well known in other promotions and parts of the world wrestling as ‘TNT.’ Rivera originally wrestled a couple of WWF dark matches as the TNT character, but Vince McMahon liked the fact that Rivera was well versed in the martial arts and wanted that to be the focal point of his gimmick in the promotion. Vince wanted Rivera’s new gimmick to be a wrestler from the mysterious Orient and came up with the name of Kwang. According to Bruce Prichard, one of the meanings of the name translated to the word…’Light.’
McMahon wanted the Kwang character to primarily use martial arts in his matches and also gave him the ‘Asian Mist’ as a part of the gimmick. Vince also felt that Rivera had a babyface look, so instead of using face paint…McMahon wanted Kwang to wear a mask. Rivera was fine with wearing the mask, because he wore one for a good portion of his career elsewhere. Rivera traveled to Mexico and had designs made up of what he wanted the Kwang mask to look like. Rivera said that he himself requested that the eyes in the mask be covered, because if he was going to portray a wrestler from the Orient…he needed to logically hide his eyes from fans.
Kwang made his WWF debut in 1994 and according to Rivera…he personally loved the Kwang gimmick. The reasoning he gave was that other than wearing a mask and using a mist…he wrestled exactly the same he way he did as TNT in his days wrestling in Puerto Rico. The Kwang gimmick was eventually shelved permanently and he was repackaged without a mask as the longtime friend of Razor Ramon named Savio Vega.
You can read other Gimmick Table entries here
Ring the Damn Bell 
At least Savio Vega came back to WWE and Corey Graves said Savio had TNT with his kicks.
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