10 WCW Gimmicks That Were Too Ridiculous To Take Seriously
The booking from WCW featured many talented names being placed in unique roles for better or worse. WCW had many of the biggest legends of all time on the roster and had to find different ways to spotlight everyone. Not every wrestler would get the same platform with some ideas being more ridiculous.
Unfortunately, quite a few gimmicks would cross the line beyond the ability to take seriously. WCW had a bad habit of going too far with some of their bolder ideas. Wrestlers and fans had different approaches to these ideas with some working, but most missed the mark. The following WCW gimmicks were too ridiculous to take credibly from the fan base.
10 The Wall
WCW introduced The Wall as the bodyguard for Alex Wright’s new Berlyn persona. Even though Berlyn flopped and became too controversial to continue, The Wall received a push on his own trying to play into his size.
Matches of The Wall featured him Chokeslamming wrestlers through tables or off tall structures. However, things became ridiculous with moments like standing on a roof and challenging Hulk Hogan making him a joke more than a threat.
9 Misfits In Action
Vince Russo wanted to push some of the unsung heroes of WCW’s lower mid-card picture with the Misfits in Action faction. Hugh Morrus received the leadership role as General E. Rection having talents like Chavo Guerrero, Lash Leroux, Van Hammer, and Major Gunns behind him.
The hope was that the Misfits would become a fan-favorite group of pranksters like D-Generation X for WWE. WCW fans didn’t buy into the faction beyond cheering them against heels. The corny portrayal led to a disappointing time for fans once it became too ridiculous.
8 The Artist Formerly Known As Prince Iaukea
WCW’s use of Prince Iaukea saw him getting pushed occasionally with relatively weak results. Vince Russo tried to make it work in 2000 by showing more of his personality with a new gimmick. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Iaukea played into Prince’s renaming as a musician.
Iaukea started acting like Prince as his new gimmick with Sharmell becoming his manager as Paisley. The act became ridiculous from the start due to how deep into the parody it was. WCW tried a bit too hard and caused fans to not care at all about the gimmick.
7 The KISS Demon
Another absurd idea from WCW’s later years saw an appearance by the rock band KISS sparking a unique demand. KISS made it a contract stipulation that a wrestling character would be based on them when having a live performance on Nitro.
The gimmick debuted to utter confusion of the audience wondering what the point of this all was. WCW booked the character to have a disastrous feud with Vampiro that hurt them both. The KISS Demon was mocked by the audience to make it a failure.
6 Glacier
WCW had a great track record from mid-1996 to early 1998 for being the premiere wrestling show. The New World Order made them must-watch television and matches from the cruiserweight division stole the show most weeks.
One rare flaw was the gimmick of Glacier not reaching its full potential. Eric Bischoff producing vignettes similar to the Mortal Kombat video game style sparked excitement. However, the debut of Glacier and the following months saw fans viewing it as more ridiculous than interesting.
5 Undefeated Sid Vicious
WCW signed Sid Vicious in 1999 to become the next major rival to Goldberg. Sid had an interesting angle as the new undefeated wrestler destroying opponents in his return. The idea was that Sid would vow to beat Goldberg’s 173-0 record when meeting each other at the end.
However, timing made WCW try to inflate the win number by having Sid attack many lower-card wrestlers every week. The story turned into a joke with Sid’s segments becoming comedic. Goldberg and Sid had terrible matches ruining any of the remaining interest.
4 The Renegade
Fans were curious when WCW started making comments about a character like Ultimate Warrior appearing soon. The Renegade was the gimmick that appeared with a wrestler that looked a lot like Warrior but not the actual Warrior.
WCW tried to make their own version of Warrior by blatantly ripping off the WWE character. Fans were unsure how to react and ended up turning on the act. WCW risked a train wreck payoff and got just that with the entire concept of The Renegade.
3 Harlem Heat 2000
The normal version of Harlem Heat deserves to be argued as the best tag team in WCW history with the Steiner Brothers. However, WCW hurt their name by trying to come up with a new version of the team within a putrid storyline.
Stevie Ray turning heel led to him introducing Ahmed Johnson as old friend Big T and attacking Booker T since he was a bigger star now on his own. The angle featured Big T winning a feud that owned the rights to the letter T and causing Booker to lose that. Harlem Heat 2000 flopped badly with such a horrible form of storytelling losing the audience.
2 Dungeon Of Doom
Hulk Hogan’s face character reached rock bottom in WCW when feuding with the Dungeon of Doom faction. WCW came up with that stable specifically due to wanting monster heel characters to feud with Hogan in an old-school storytelling concept.
The idea was unfortunately outdated and led to Hogan looking worse along the way. Wrestlers like The Shark, The Zodiac, and Kamala showed how outlandish the faction was. Even the bright spots like The Giant or Kevin Sullivan suffered from being way too ridiculous to work as a united act.
1 "The Juice" Juventud Guerrera
Vince Russo’s era at WCW featured him wanting to show new characters for wrestlers in the cruiserweight division. Many fans viewed this as the worst era of the division since Russo didn’t care about them having good matches and gave them little ring time.
Gimmicks like Juventud Guerrera becoming The Juice and doing an impersonation of The Rock ruined any goodwill he had with the fans. Even the rare moments of humor didn’t make up for the generally bad comedy that ruined one of the best cruiserweight wrestlers of the time.
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