10 Iconic Wrestling Gimmicks You Didn't Know Were STOLEN
6. The APA
Wrestling is absolutely stupid.
It's less stupid now, but in the 1990s, it was very, very stupid.
WCW found itself in the crosshairs of Vince McMahon's lawyer Jerry McDevitt more than once throughout that decade. Vince wasn't remotely happy when it was implied that Scott Hall still worked for him in May 1996. The former Earthquake, John Tenta, worked for WCW as 'Avalanche' before Vince decided they were taking the piss and threatened legal action. A similar scenario unfolded with the Big Boss Man; his WCW name 'The Boss' was also too close to the WWF's intellectual property, and it didn't help that Tony Schiavone would say "The Boss...man is he big!"
WCW did get smarter when borrowing a tune from the WWF (or rather, slightly less brain stem-dead).
By the time Asya ripped off Chyna, the WWF was so big that they'd stopped caring, but WCW was slightly less on the nose when presenting the 'Kronik' unit of Brian Adams and Bryan Clark to audiences in 2000.
The WWF's APA were stiff, unrefined brawlers who drank beer. Kronik were stiff, unrefined brawlers who smoked weed.
They weren't very good at protecting anybody, mind. They weren't even very good at protecting themselves, having worked one of the worst WWE matches ever against the Brothers of Destruction at Unforgiven 2001. Then again, perhaps the performance was actually good, subtle character work.
Marijuana causes short-term memory loss, and that might explain why Clark had no idea where the hell he was supposed to be.