10 Times Wrestlers Got Away With Ripping Off WWE
9. Sting
Scott Hall conceived of Sting's darker, cooler, The Crow-inspired persona.
Both men were backstage getting ready ahead of some TV taping or other. This being WCW, we can scrape through the apocrypha and guess that it wasn't a house show. Hall, a vastly underrated wrestling mind, surveyed Sting and the mess of halfway-there brown hair he was growing out following years of peroxide damage.
"Are you growing out your hair? Are you still gonna wear the happy guy tights?" asked Hall.
Sting was bemused. Unlike Hall, he hadn't thought to alter his still-popular 1980s aesthetic to become even more popular in the 1990s. Hall nudged him towards the Eureka moment.
"I'm not saying rip off 'Taker," he said. "But rip off 'Taker."
The new Crow Sting was a darker, trench coat-clad badass who traded in the piercing howl for hushed mystique - and while his cascading from the rafters gimmick was more super-heroic than supernatural, the jet-black look was a knowing nod to the man who inspired his killer silent killer act.