WCW was notorious for spending exorbitant amounts of money for investments that rarely paid off. Concerts during Nitro, pay-per-views in Sturgis in front of non-paying crowds, and inflated contracts for wrestlers who werent worth the money or even appearing on TV at all led to Eric Bischoff being given the nickname ATM Eric. One of those investments was the companys relationship with KISS. As part of the deal, WCW was contractually obligated to create a wrestler based on KISS and feature him in a pay-per-view main event. The first bad sign was when the KISS concert on Nitro became one of the shows lowest rated segments ever. Brian Adams was originally cast as The KISS Demon, decked out in a costume nearly identical to Gene Simmons, but he flat out rejected the role and it was passed on to jobber Dale Torborg, who had been using a baseball gimmick. The character was an immediate flop, but WCW in their infinite wisdom had certain obligations they had to follow through with, so they had to continue featuring The Demon. They were able to get around the main event stipulation by booking The Demon in a special main event at SuperBrawl 2000. The end result was the character being booked in comedy segments with Norman Smiley before eventually fizzling out. It was an awful attempt at grabbing some mainstream appeal that backfired horribly.
Brad Hamilton is a writer, musician and marketer/social media manager from Atlanta, Georgia. He's an undefeated freestyle rap battle champion, spends too little time being productive and defines himself as the literary version of Brock Lesnar.
