A ref gimmick

[thedamndest]

Could be kinda cool. Bring in a guy as a new ref who slowly gets more disillusioned with the job, refused to count, doesn't give a shit. You would probably have to do it during a couple of jobber matches though since you don't want him to distract from actual people so you'd have to make it clear to the audience right away that he is what they should be watching. I guess then you'd feud him with the people who's matches he fucked up and then he's in the thick of it.

Has this been done before? Ref to wrestler? I can think of Danny Davis, but he was a regular ref first and as I recall it didn't last very long.

[Funky Fly]

Charles Robinson wrestled as Lil Naitch in WCW.

[Juan]

Yeah the only one I can think of is Danny Davis

[Destor]

We ran this angle at a show here recently actually. Guy was training to be a wrestler so we put him in the Zebra outfit so he can get closer to the matches, pretty common. Well once he got ready to make the jump he started to pay less and less attention to the matches. His final night as a ref he was reffing the main event legit and then when the big false finish happened his cell phone rang. He stopped counting and answered his phone. Thus provoking the baby to attack him, this leads to a DQ, joining the big heel faction, feud, yadda yadda yadda. Got over pretty big.

[Destor]

Plus we can still work him as a heel ref so it's a win win.

[Juan]

That's pretty cool, Destor.

[thedamndest]

I am glad my idea has been tested and proven over.

[DrA]

They could have a referee wrestler that is allowed to referee his own matches, so whenever he gets someone in a pinfall he counts real fast to win all of his matches.

[Mr. Nerfect]

I would like to see more personality in the referees, in general. Some that don't like counting out wrestlers, some that are too quick to fly to the DQ, etc.

[darkpower]

Wow...VERY ironic that we would be talking about this sort of thing, because my stepbro is in a local wrestling promotion here in my area as a referee, but he wants to be a wrestler and was training as one. I think it's associated with the NWA in some way, even though, according to him, it's not the same NWA that the WCW or TNA was under for some time (he said there were several different NWAs or something like that, I can't remember the exact way he described it).

Anyway, he did a few matches as a masked wrestler (the owner has this mindset in which referees turned wrestlers wouldn't be taken seriously or something like that), but not sure what they are doing with that right now beyond those matches. He still works as a ref (they need him right now seeing as they only got two refs, him and this other weird dude that calls counts a pinfall on one knee as if he's proposing as he slaps the mat).

If he ends up getting into larger promotions somehow, I'll be sure that will be a looming question for him at least.