10 Most INSANE Promises Wrestling Promoters Made To Wrestlers
9. Ernest Miller Will Dance With James Brown
WCW was a bin fire in 2000. An entertaining blaze of garbage, sure, but a bin fire nonetheless. Creatively bankrupt and soon to be financially unwanted by those at the top of the AOL/Time Warner tree, the once-proud company couldn't justify frittering away thousands/millions on utter tripe any longer.
They still did, right enough.
Heading into SuperBrawl 2000 that February, Ernest 'The Cat' Miller bragged that he'd be dancing on pay-per-view with his hero James Brown. Pretty much everybody tuning into Nitro and Thunder thought Miller was full of it, but big Ernest was being...well...he was being earnest. Besides, he had key knowledge of wheeling and dealing backstage between management and Brown's representatives.
Thus, WCW brought in the actual James Brown for SuperBrawl rather than booking some knock off impersonator. In what was just the latest unintentionally hilarious episode of World Championship What-were-they-thinking, bosses failed to promote that Brown would be there at all.
They literally neglected to advertise that the famous soul singer was going to be in the house. Being fair, he was only paid $25,000 (which was small in such circles for incoming celebs), but still - those were wasted pay-per-view dollars because WCW didn’t tell anyone the musician was going to be there in the first place.
The most important thing to Miller was that he got to live out his dream. In that sense, WCW was a dream factory. To viewers and corporate suits atop Turner, the place was more of a nightmare. Let's just say this won't be the last WCW entry on the list.
Few will be surprised.