25 Crazy WCW Facts (That Get Progressively More Ridiculous)

23. Money For Nothing

Lanny Poffo, the brother of Macho Man Randy Savage, was a more than capable midcard wrestler for his era. He excelled at comedy so much that he is one half of Kenny Omega’s favourite match ever. 

Years after his prime, he signed a deal with WCW in 1995. This was at the behest of his brother, who had purchased on his behalf the rights to the Gorgeous George gimmick. This was ugly and somewhat shrewd at the same time, in that Poffo peaked as the effeminate Genius character in the WWF. Poffo bleached his hair in preparation for the role. Some online records suggest that he worked a maximum of two dark matches, but this is difficult to verify. Cagematch records an entry of a match on October 14, 1997 before a Saturday Night taping, but literally lists a series of question marks as the opponent. In the October 27, 1997 issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported that Poffo defeated ‘L.A.’ on that date. 

Beyond that one dark match, for longer than the entire duration of the Attitude Era, Poffo sat at home and collected, per the Death of WCW, $150,000 to never even fly into work - much less wrestle. 

This, potentially, is the single dumbest WCW fact ever, but there might be some mitigation, in that Eric Bischoff reckons that Savage was paid $100,000 less to accommodate the deal. But even that is extremely stupid, because it would mean that WCW had a wrestler working for free that could have put the odd guy over at least.

Bear in mind that the title of this article is ‘Crazy WCW Facts (That Get Progressively More Ridiculous). It can’t get more ridiculous than this, can it?

*Mick McCarthy intensifies*

It can.