25 Crazy WCW Facts (That Get Progressively More Ridiculous)
19. The Commentary Was EVEN WORSE In A Different Language
The WCW commentary team was often ridiculed, across its various incarnations, but come on. They had an impossible job, especially towards the end.
Bobby Heenan - whose ideas were waved away by Eric Bischoff - by his own admission checked out within weeks. He spent six years in WCW. Tony Schiavone’s job as lead commentator was to make sense of the storylines, so of course his credibility was shot to death by firing squad. Larry Zbysko was a sardonic arse. Mike Tenay was informative and emerged from the circus with his integrity intact. Dusty Rhodes was at least delightfully insane. Eric Bischoff just wanted to be on the show, and wasn’t worthy of his place until he joined the New World Order, at which point his smugness actually worked. Stevie Ray was a goof. Scott Hudson actually tried. Steve McMichael was a spotlight hog, but a big personality. Mark Madden was an intensely unlikeable presence, much too off-putting and witless even to play the heel colour role. Was the commentary better in German?
Nein!
To be fair, it might have been most of the time, but at Starrcade 1999, in a rarity, the German commentary team was in attendance live. They were joined by a comedian, Tom Gerhardt, who was famous in the early ‘90s for a routine in which he’d dress up as a giant penis and pretend to jizz on the audience. If Art Donovan and Bubba The Love Sponge were spliced together, Gerhardt would be the resulting abomination: he mocked Disco Inferno as “gay”, complimented the “nice t*ts” of Madusa, and basically said that wrestling was fake and that he could beat all the wrestlers up, including Chris Benoit, standing up when Benoit issued his open challenge.