One of the most famous character changes in wrestling history almost happened very differently. Former WCW President Eric Bischoff recently shared new details about the creation of Sting’s iconic Crow gimmick and explained why he kept the project a secret during its development.
Crow Sting first appeared in WCW in late 1996 during the height of the nWo storyline. Inspired by Brandon Lee’s character Eric Draven from The Crow, Sting completely changed his image.
After the infamous Fake Sting storyline, Sting disappeared in order to reinvent himself. The bright face paint, colorful gear, and energetic promos were gone. In their place came black-and-white face paint, a long trench coat, and a mysterious attitude.
For more than a year, Sting often appeared in the arena rafters carrying his signature black baseball bat and watching everything from above. The new character became very popular and eventually led to his long-awaited match against Hulk Hogan at Starrcade 1997.
Eric Bischoff feared early criticism would derail his Crow Sting idea
Speaking on a recent episode of 83 Weeks, Bischoff looked back on a visit to the WCW Power Plant. He discussed the people who helped bring the darker version of Sting to life. During the conversation, he gave a lot of credit to special effects artist Andre Freitas. Bischoff also revealed that secrecy emerged as an important part of the process.
Even though Bischoff believed in the idea, he chose to keep the project limited to a small group of people inside WCW.
It wasn’t mainly because he feared information would leak out. Instead, he thought that people inside the company would criticize the idea before it even had a chance to succeed.
“This kind of goes to the resentment and the jealousy, just the culture at the time. It’s not so much that I was worried about leaks, although that too. But you start having people internally passing judgment on a project before the project even starts, they’re already crapping on it, and making it more difficult for anybody to accept. And that was one of the reasons why I kept things internal because I didn’t want internally people to start passing judgment and resisting it before it even gets started,” Bischoff said.
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