10 Things WCW Ripped Off

In 1999, WCW brought in creative pairing Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, hoping they could use their brand of controversial, ratings-grabbing magic to reverse the company's course during the Monday Night Wars. What they actually gave WCW included Oklahoma.

Oklahoma was a character based on Jim Ross, if 'based on' can be taken to mean 'horribly denigrating'. Ferrara himself played the gimmick partly because he could do passable a Jim Ross voice but perhaps because no one else was willing to take the inevitable flak. The character debuted during the Piñata On A Pole Match (another grisly offspring of Ferrara & Russo's tenure), where he spoke out of the side of his mouth Bell's Palsy-style, repeated everything three times, and generally made an idiot out of himself.

Jim Cornette, a friend of Ross, spat in Ferrara's face years later in anger for insulting his friend, while Ross himself reacted with bemusement about why any of this was going on. Audience reactions were a mixture of the two.