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What do you get when you cross an unproven face champ with no real heel foil, stalled negotiations with a World Class worker, and the booking prowess of Ole Anderson? You get The Worst Angle Of All Time: the Black Scorpion debacle. A not-so-brief synopsis: The year was 1990, and NWA/WCW World Champion Sting was drawing mediocre crowds for the company. But head booker Ole Anderson had big plans. Soon, a mysterious figure known as the Black Scorpion began sending in videotapes and demanding they be played on WCW programming. The tapes set the stage: the Black Scorpion (who appeared in shadow and whose voice was altered to "protect his identity") was a figure from Sting's past, and he was coming to WCW to destroy him once and for all. The whole thing was set up to make the "smart" fans think the Scorpion was Jim "Ultimate Warrior" Hellwig, who had teamed with Sting early in both mens' careers as the Bladerunners; but in reality, the Black Scorpion was booked to be the Angel of Death, a main-event worker from the Von Erichs' World Class promotion who had brief contact with Sting when both men were in Bill Watts' UWF. The problem was, WCW hadn't actually signed AOD before they started running the videos, and, realizing he was being brought in as a major part of the top angle in the fed, Angel began to hold out for more and more money, constantly rejecting offers. Soon, WCW officials felt that AOD was more trouble than he was worth, and the Black Scorpion angle, initially promising, took a turn for the worse. Now that no one knew who would eventually don the mask, Ole began to try to draw heat for Scorpion by- ready for this?- performing evil magic tricks. No, really- every once in a while, Black Scorpion would appear on WCW broadcasts, pull a crowd plant out of the audience, and a) make them disappear, or b) turn them into tigers. Strangely enough, this method for building the storyline didn't exactly work out, and WCW crowds got smaller and smaller as the fans began to revolt against such cartoonish storytelling. So Ole began using multiple Scorpions, throwing, among others, Al Perez and the Angel of Death (who, realizing his chance at the "big time" was slipping away, finally signed on at a fraction of his original asking price) in Black Scorpion garb, and when it came time for the big blowoff, a cage match between Sting and the Scorpion at Starrcade '90, Ole made a desperate attempt at salvaging the angle by going with the obvious: he put Ric Flair under the mask, and sold the thing as more Four Horsemen mind games against Sting. Flair lost the match, by the way, and until WCW Uncensored '95, when he came out of the crowd in a dress and jobbed to Hulk Hogan in a match he wasn't even involved in, the whole mess was considered the most embarassing chapter in the Nature Boy's illustrious career. So the next time you younguns find yourselves complaining about the mystery of the Hummer Driver, thank the wrestling gods you weren't around for the Black Scorpion. or are believed to be public domain. This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer at 800x600 resolution. |
