by Joanne Crampton

Created on: June 20, 2009   Last Updated: June 24, 2009

Randy Orton - professional wrestler. Handsome chiselled features, body sculpted like a Greek god, cocky smile, and at least as far as his wrestling character goes, not very nice guy. Oh yes, and he has one or two tattoos.

Body art has been a big thing for many years within the wrestling industry, and there are many different opinions and viewpoints as to why the two industries are linked. Perhaps it's something to do with big burly men wanting to assert their masculinity and tough guy status while running around in latex tights - that's just one viewpoint. Also to consider are:

Character Development:

A wrestler's character, or gimmick is what can make or break a wrestler's career. The Undertaker has built a 20 year legacy on his "dead man" gimmick. However, when he was performing as Mean Mark Callous in WCW? Not so successful. Mick Foley said that the best wrestling characters are ones that are simply a louder, brighter, more amplified version of the person themselves. Some characters within pro-wrestling can be added to with body art - again The Undertaker is well known for his tattoos, and the various skulls he has tattooed all over his arms add to his character development. The Rock, in his heyday as a wrestler before he gave it all up to be a movie star, often waxed lyrical about his Samoan heritage, and then backed that up with a large tribal tatoo accross his chest.

Randy Orton's tattoos are in a similar vein - when he was injured during a match with Triple H and broke his collar bone, he found himself unable to compete for a number of months. He used that time off to (among other things) develop his tattoo collection, and when he returned to the ring with a new, even more unpleasant, nasty demeanour to his character, the full lengh tattoo sleeves on his arms helped to cement his bad guy statuts.

Other examples of using body art for character purposes include Rey Mysterio (he has a "619" tattoo - not only his area code in San Diego, but also the name of his finishing move), Stone Cold Steve Austin (tattoo of the state of Texas on his leg) etc, The Hurricane (tattoo of the The Green Lantern logo on his arm - when this was first brought up on TV, it developed into a whole new character for Gregory Helms, and was the most successful time of his career thus far). The list is long and varied.

Personal Statements:

C.M Punk is well known for his "straight edge" lifestyle, that he has successfully built on to develop his wrestling character. That C M Punk

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