5 Most Controversial WCW Gimmicks Ever

4. Arachnaman

Brad Armstrong, of the famous Armstrong wrestling family, was probably one of the most underrated guys to ever wrestle for a major organisation. He was a tremendous athlete, a great wrestler, and by all accounts a hell of a guy, too.

Despite all of his positive traits, he never managed to rise above midcard level and pretty much hung around the tag team and light heavyweight divisions, wrestling solid matches but never receiving much of a push or any sort of creative direction.

Then one day in 1991 WCW had an amazing (read: idiotic) gimmick idea for him.

He was going to be ARACHNAMAN! The pro-wrestling man-spider guy, or something. Basically, he was a real-life version of Spider-Man, okay? Only he wore purple and yellow, so that's totally fine and not violating any copyright laws, right?

Wrong. Marvel caught a whiff of what WCW were up to and threatened to sue them for copyright infringement unless they ceased and desisted with the character.

And that was the end of Arachnaman. Shame, really. His silly string finisher was MONEY. This was an embarrassment for WCW, since it was so very blatant what they were trying to do and were completely shut down by the comic book giants.

Side note: WCW also needed to receive an agreement from Marvel Comics in 1998 when they were renewing Hulk Hogan's WCW contract, because Marvel actually owned the name at the time.