The WCW Conspiracy Iceberg EXPLAINED!
15. Ted DiBiase Was Signed To Play A Different Role
Ted DiBiase was not amazing in WCW, but he was brilliantly cast in a role that was brilliantly conceived.
Trillionaire Ted was his nickname, and he was revealed as the financial muscle behind the interloping New World Order faction. This was a masterstroke. It wasn’t make-or-break - when something is red-hot in wrestling, the details don’t tend to matter that much - but what a detail. There was a plot hole eating away at the angle from day one: who is paying Kevin Nash and Scott Hall?
The original idea, of course, was Vince McMahon, who had sent the Outsiders to WCW to destroy it from within. This explicit story beat was very quickly and publicly dropped upon the threat of legal action; at the Great American Bash 1996, Eric Bischoff asked the Outsiders if they were operating on behalf of the WWF, and they had to say “no”, which was unfortunate. But it was not an angle-killer; that’s because DiBiase, the former Million Dollar Man, was revealed as the benefactor before Bischoff wormed his way into the storyline. The DiBiase reveal was borderline genius; he was from “up north” and had long been established as a very rich dude. Some folks on Reddit however reckon he was meant to play another mysterious benefactor: the man pulling the strings behind Diamond Dallas Page’s dropped 1996 rags-to-riches arc.
There doesn’t appear to be too much truth to this theory because there was no need to cover anything up. It has been speculated that Page’s wife, Kimberly, was set to debut in a role abandoned when it became clear that the real money was in DDP as a babyface.