Worst Characters Ever!: Disco Inferno

“He’s so cocky, he’s so cool, he’s just a disco dancing fool”

I’ve not mentioned it until now, but to mark the 15th anniversary of the start of WCW Nitro earlier this month, I decided to watch it from the beginning (I'm up to Januaey 1996). I’ve read a few books on WCW, and some wrestling biographies, so had a sense of all the backstage bullshit, but I realised that I hadn’t watched it until it had gone past saving.

I’ve been watching it with an open mind and, comparing it with Raw in ’95, WCW were actually putting out a half-decent show. The main-events were mostly bullshit, with the belt being passed every other episode between Hogan, Flair, Savage and Luger, but some of the mid-card stuff was genuinely excellent. With stars like Sabu, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Jushin Liger, Dean Malenko, Psychosis, Alex Wright, Konan and (the very underrated) Johnny B. Badd, appearing most weeks and putting on some stellar matches, it is actually worth watching. This is WCW pre-nWo, pre-Outsiders, pre-Bischoff as character; the show had momentum and energy and the formula can still be seen today in the better episodes of Impact. The commentary was pretty dire. Bobby Heenan made for an obvious heel colour commentator, Bischoff was the play-by-play guy and Steve “Mongo” McMichael also as a colour commentator. Steve McMichael is plain awful; during every show he sits with some ugly dog called Pepe and bickers with Bobby the Brain. In a match between Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, Eddie hits a Tornado DDT, Mongo comes out with the line: “Wow that move has never been done on this planet and if you think you've seen it before you have more rocks in your head than Heenan.” Hmm...

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. WCW also had some terrible characters, and the one I want to share with you today is Disco Inferno. Disco Inferno is basically a wrestler based on John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, well, kind of. Mr Inferno would come to the ring dressed in disco garb, and do a weird wiggly dance whist pointing his hands and the most lacklustre way imaginable. Was he meant to be shit? Was that his gimmick? I would have loved to have been at the meeting when someone came up with this character. “How about a wrestler who’s a disco dancer?”, “I love it, let’s put him on TV”. Take a look at the clips and try and understand how the hell this guy lasted for 6 years in WCW, and won a few titles? The mind boggles, it really does.