Athletes - Mike Bucci

Home > Listing Index > Athletes > Mike Bucci

	Athletes - Mike Bucci

Mike Bucci (born June 5, 1972 in Toms River, New Jersey) is a professional wrestler performing for World Wrestling Entertainment. He currently appears on the SmackDown! brand with a fitness instructor gimmick, under the ring name Simon Dean (a name inspired by the real name of former wrestler and current WWE road agent Dean Malenko). He previously performed as Nova or Super Nova in Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Career

Extreme Championship Wrestling

Bucci made a name for himself while wrestling in ECW as Super Nova. He was a flunkie of Stevie Richards, who was a flunkie for Raven. Nova, Richards and The Blue Meanie did several hilarious skits where they imitated other people. For a time, they all dressed up as the hard rock band KISS. Their most well-known was the Blue World Order (bWo). They parodied the nWo and Richards was "Big Stevie Cool" (a takeoff on Kevin Nash's nickname of "Big Daddy Cool"), Meanie was "Da Blue Guy", a takeoff on Scott Hall, "Da Bad Guy," and Bucci was "Hollywood Nova", a takeoff of "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan.

Bucci was known for having a unique and creative move set, and was often called "the most imitated man in wrestling" due to the fact that almost all his moves were copied by other wrestlers in the business.

World Wrestling Entertainment

In his debut for World Wrestling Entertainment, he portrayed the gimmick of a physical-fitness guru named Simon Dean in the vein of numerous infomercials. Introductory promos showed him "selling" his "Simon System," a supposed program of diet, exercise, and supplementation. The promos parodied fitness infomercials, as Simon routinely insulted his supposed customers. The promos went so far as to provide an actual telephone number to call and order the Simon System; however, unlike virtually all infomercials, the number was not toll-free. People who called the number wound up hearing a WWE promotional message.

During this gimmick he acted as the sponsor of WWE RAW occasional wrestling after first insulting the fitness of the crowd and the area in which they were located. After not making much of an impact on RAW he was teamed up with fellow heel wrestler Maven who supposedly was a user of the "Simon System," the team again didn't make much of an impact.

During a WWE produced ECW PPV, One Night Stand, Bucci returned as Hollywood Nova with Da Blue Guy and Big Stevie Cool as the bWo.

He was next moved to SmackDown! as part of the WWE Draft joining the other members of the bWo, appearing as "Hollywood" Nova for his first appearance on the show. His next appearance for the brand was wrestling on its sister show, WWE Velocity as Simon Dean. The general belief was that the bWo appearance was going to be a one off, meaning Bucci would keep to his "health sponsor" gimmick, but it was next annouced that the bWo would participate in a 6-man tag match at the Great American Bash against The Mexicools. The announcement of this match occurred on the same edition of SmackDown! that Bucci's Simon Dean character had a match with Booker T. At the 2005 Great American Bash, the bWo lost to the Mexicools (Juventud Guerrera, Psicosis and Super Crazy) in the six-man tag team match.

The appearance of the bWo soon faded. With no mention of The Blue Meanie staying with the company and Richards returning to his previous heel gimmick, and Bucci continued with the Simon Dean persona.

In late August 2005 the Simon Dean character began coming to the ring on the Dean Machine (a Segway HT type machine) and force feed "Simon System" products to opponents who wouldn't accept his offer to try them. The Simon Dean character had his first major WWE pay-per-view appearance at WWE No Mercy, in a loss against Lashley. After the match Simon ate 20 double cheesburgers as a part of the deal made before the match. Dean has been noted on his recent appearances as the "Head of Smackdown's welcoming committee", a position in which he is used as a jobber to debuting wrestlers.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Mike Bucci ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Mike Bucci; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay