The Black Scorpion: The Story Of WCW’s Most Bizarre Mystery Angle

In the history of professional wrestling, there are storylines that fail because of bad timing, storylines that fail because of bad matches, and storylines that fail because they are fundamentally broken from conception to execution. The saga of “The Black Scorpion” in 1990 belongs firmly in the third category. It was an angle that attempted to blend the gritty, athletic tradition of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) with the cartoonish spectacle of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), but succeeded only in alienating the core audience of World Championship Wrestling (WCW). It involved magic tricks, voice modulators, a spaceship landing at the biggest show of the year, and the humiliation of the company’s greatest performer, Ric Flair.The Black Scorpion is often cited as the definit