Wrestler:  Alex Wright
Real Name: Alex Wright 
Birthday: May 17, 1975 
Hometown: Nuremberg, Germany
Resides: Atlanta, GA 
Height & Weight: 6’4″ – 225 lbs. 
Trained by: Steve Wright 
Debut: 1991 
Previous Names: “Das Wonderkin” and Berlin
Finishing Move: Hangman’s neckbreaker
Favorite Moves: Cross-body and STF

Alex Wright Title History

Since the 1980′s, professional wrestling has endured and survived a drastic change in the style of how their performers work in front of a televised audience; they define their personas and their wrestling styles based on gimmicks. Gimmicks are the most common sight to see in professional wrestling. Not everyone loves them, but not everyone hates them either; the point is, a good wrestler with a good gimmick will make money. More often than not, it has to be the two combined. You can not have a bad wrestler with a good gimmick, and you can not have a good wrestler with a bad gimmick. Simply because they will not be able to get a good crowd reaction and therefore, nobody will really want to see them.

In all my years watching professional wrestling, I have rarely come across an exception to the above rule. One man who did catch my eye however was a man by the name of Alex Wright. When I first saw this man, I was intrigued simply by his last name, “Wright”, as being British, I was very familiar with a man who is quite popular around here by the name of Steve Wright. After doing my research, I realized that Alex Wright was in fact the son of British legend Steve Wright, and so I immediately started paying attention to this young mans career.

I first saw him in WCW n 1995. His ring work was exceptional; he simply wreaked of a classic wrestling style that his father had obviously taught him. One thing that was simply terrible about Alex Wright however was his gimmick., Upon entering WCW, he was given the name “Das Wonderkin” which means Wonderkid; his fathers nickname was also Wonderkid. Of course this was not the problem; the problem was that he was given the gimmick of a dancing fool who would come out to disco music and perform a terrible step dance in front of a live audience. What made it worse; he was forced to include this in his wrestling style.

Many fans were unable to look past his gimmick and focus on his wrestling style, simply because it was so obnoxious. It eventually became so infamous however that people wanted to see it just to get a kick out of this amazingly multi-talented performer making a fool out of himself. It was simply a disgrace to his second-generation heritage and his father’s legacy. Of course, being a professional, he stuck it until he was eventually repackaged as “Berlyn”, a harsh German character similar to a dictator.

The Berlyn character was something that could have made Alex Wright a major star in the WCW, however, due to his past as the dancing German, the backstage politics kicked in and wrestlers refused to put him over as a result of looking bad. This was the demise of the Berlyn character and he soon came back as the dancing Alex Wright until WCW folded in 2001. He then retired from the sport for good into a pro wrestling trainer.

Alex Wright is a classic example of good talent going to waste. He had all the wrestling credentials necessary to being a star in the sport, yet all of this was thrown away because of a stupid gimmick. I have followed this young mans career since day one, and it just seems to be a case of “the wrong place at the wrong time” which was the same scenario of fate that befallen so many wrestlers that broke into the WCW during the 1990′s. It is a shame really when you think of what could have been for a performer of this stellar caliber.

written by Wayne K. Wilkins