5 Scary Gimmicks That Failed in WWE and WCW
By Dean Siemon
The Shockmaster (WCW)
This really shouldn’t shock anyone who has seen the viral video of the “Shockmaster” stumbling into professional wrestling history.
Fred Ottman had a number of characters in his time between World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling as Tugboat and Typhoon. But in 1993, he was joining WCW and debut as a mystery partner for Sting, Dustin Rhodes and Davey Boy Smith for an upcoming War Games pay-per-view tag team match with Sid Vicious, Vader, Booker T and Stevie Ray (Harlem Heat).
After Sting said the infamous words that their mystery partner was going to “shock the world,” there’s a good chance the way he and others expected the world would be shocked was much different from what happened. Pyro went off and the plan was for “the Shockmaster” fell through a wall with his glitter painted Storm Trooper helmet falling off in the process.
Not to knock Ottman as a wrestler, but his rotundness was not something to be feared and his attire would not be equivocated to something that one might see at a very tiny independent wrestling show. Arn Anderson acting as the voice for the Shockmaster made it feel more like a D-grade Kung-Fu movie with English dub.
Now how could WCW save the Shockmaster gimmick for the tag team match? Putting Ottman in different attire and make him clumsy and would enter the earlier mentioned eight-man tag team match looking like a construction worker. There’s not really a good way to follow that up, so, there’s your winner.
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