5 Most Controversial WCW Gimmicks Ever
1. Seven
You've got to hand it to Dustin Rhodes. Few men would have been able to make a character as outlandish and controversial as Goldust work, but he did it. Regardless of how questionable the content he was given was, Rhodes went out there and gave it his all, oftentimes turning chicken s**t into chicken salad in the process.
When Rhodes left the WWF in the summer of 1999 and headed for WCW, many wondered under what gimmick he would be going back to Atlanta with, or if he'd even be wrestling under a gimmick at all. After all, Rhodes had enjoyed a successful run wrestling under his given name and without a fancy gimmick in the early 90s before he mad the jump to New York.
Vignettes began plying on WCW television hyping the forthcoming debut of a character named 'Seven', to be played by Rhodes. The vignette showed Rhodes, his face covered in white makeup (which made him look like the title character from the film Powder), standing outside of a child's bedroom window and asking him to come with him in order to 'live forever'.
They were eerie and creepy and it was hard to know what to make of them.
The character was quite blatantly modelled on The Strangers, the villains from the 1998 neo-noir Dark City, right down to long black coat and hat. To a lot of people, though - including Turner Standards and Practices - it looked like it could be easily misinterpreted as being a child abductor/molester.
The character made its debut on the November 9th 1999 edition of Nitro, levitating his way to the ring with the aid of a zip wire. It was a cool visual, but as soon as Rhodes got into the ring he broke character and delivered a bizarre 'worked shoot' promo aimed at the WCW 'powers that be' (writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara), the Goldust character and the WWF.
Seven was the brainchild of Rhodes and a temporary booking committee, but then Russo was hired and he didn't like it so had convinced Dustin to ditch it.
The Seven character was over before it got started and Rhodes went back to wrestling as 'The American Nightmare' Dustin Rhodes. Which was just as well, really, since the Seven character had some seriously sinister undertones to it and was just asking to land WCW in hot water.