WWE’s history with wrestlers with puppets chronicled including Lilly, Santino’s cobra, Mr. Socko, and more

By Josh Prost, PWTorch contributor


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WWE wrestlers are always presented with obstacles that are in the way of a win. It may simply be an opponent larger than them. If they are in a steel cage match, the opponent hurling you into the steel will significantly hurt your chances of having effective offense. A TLC match means that the opponent will hit you with those objects in order to get the win for themselves. But sometimes, wrestlers get creative in order to distract their opponent.

Some wrestlers use puppetry in order to make their opponents journey to a victory harder.

Puppets can be part of someone’s gimmick as well as being used as an advantage. The WWE YouTube channel added another video to their WWE Playlist series. This time, the video is focusing on times where wrestlers used puppets in order to distract their opponent. This video will shows a lighter side of professional wrestling.

This video is evidence of how often puppets have found a place in professional wrestling with wrestlers using them to effectively handicap their opponents. These puppets were also a huge part of their characters at the time, so fans developed a love for them as well.

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Lilly was featured quite prominently (perhaps because it’s still available for purchase). After Bray Wyatt was released in 2021, Bliss continued the “Firefly Fun House” with her own puppet. It was a good tribute to someone who did great work with her during the Pandemic era.

Santino Marella’s cobra might be a puppet today’s fans didn’t see. Not only does he do the move as his finisher, sometimes he has an actual cobra puppet doing the same thing. As a comedy character, Marella’s goal is to not only put on a good match, but to make people laugh while doing it. The puppet has played into those moments.

Mr. Socko from Mick Foley is among the most high-profile of WWE’s puppets over the years. It’s also the grossest and most shabby. The bright side, kids at home can create one from their own sock drawer. Randy Orton is shown in this video being introduced to getting Mr. Socko shoved in his mouth.

This was a good video showcasing that showed fans that many of these puppets are now identified with the wrestlers that used them as part of their storylines.

They are so popular that merch has been sold on the WWE Shop website because of how much fans like them. When people are in a wrestling match, most of the time the fans are expecting wrestlers to pull out a chair or have faction members run in to defend someone.

They aren’t expecting a puppet to get a front row seat to the action. But when it does happen, it makes sense because of who is handling the puppet and their character at the time of the match. That gets a loud pop from the fans because they know how important the puppet is. Sometimes wrestling needs some fun to get people smiling, and bringing out a puppet is a great way to get people to have fun.

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