WCW had some wacky characters, most wrestling fans who are vaguely familiar with the company would assume that a lot of the craziness of WCW subsided with the arrival of the nWo in 1996, as Eric Bischoff is so quick to remind us, and the more reality-based product being put out. This is more a half-truth than anything else, the much-maligned Dungeon of Doom still survived into 1997 and a whole slew of one-off random characters and appearances often plagued the non-nWo segments. Yet, one character in the nWo stands out as being particularly strange, Fake Sting.

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The Crow Sting WCW

Fake Sting Tried To Create Rifts In Team WCW

The whole purpose of the Fake Sting character was to sow dissent between the members of Team WCW against the nWo, with Lex Luger, one of the main players on Team WCW going into Fall Brawl 1996, believing that Sting had joined the nWo. Jeff Farmer, who played Fake Sting, did have a slight resemblance to Sting, but what makes the act so funny is that it is more of an uncanny resemblance rather than a case of mistaken identity. Amazingly, the Fake Sting main evented a pay-per-view alongside Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall as a member of Team nWo. In the War Games match at Fall Brawl 1996, the big angle was the real Sting abandoning his team for their lack of belief in him leading to a 4-on-3 handicap match in which Team nWo picked up the victory.

Fake Sting and Real Sting

This was certainly the highlight for Fake Sting, being involved in a main event match at a pay-per-view, he would largely be relegated to quick matches on Nitro and one of the much weaker members of the nWo. One of the highlights of the Fake Sting gimmick was the times when both the nWo Sting and the real Sting shared the ring, usually with the nWo Sting being taken out with a Scorpion Death Drop. Fake Sting's WCW career never really took off, it was a gimmick invented for precisely this one moment in a War Games match, and it served its purpose. While the character was funny in the chances that Farmer had, WCW never really what to do with nWo Sting after the big reveal at Fall Brawl, he became just another body in the hundreds of wrestlers who often struggled for TV time. The last big moment for Fake Sting in WCW came after a failed attempt to capture the WCW World Tag Team Championship with The Giant. Sting joined the nWo after the match and this left Fake Sting a rather unnecessary addition to the group.

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One of the most hilarious aspects of Fake Sting's career was his unprecedented popularity with the Japanese audience. With WCW working with New Japan Pro Wrestling throughout the 1990s, there was often crossover between the promotions, and some unlikely names would be much more popular in Japan than they were in America. The biggest example would be Scott Norton, who became a two-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, but Fake Sting was another curious example of this. Perhaps due to Sting's lack of appearances for New Japan, the Japanese audience gravitated towards the Fake Sting, and he became a much more important member of the New Japan roster compared to the WCW roster. Fake Sting's popularity in Japan exploded to such an extent that he would often team with Masahiro Chono, the leader of nWo Japan, and eventually became a fan favorite. After WCW folded, Fake Sting stayed as a member of the New Japan roster until 2002.

Fake Sting NJPW

In one of the most unlikely cases of a copycat gimmick actually getting over, Fake Sting managed to do something so many others have failed in the past. The Fake Kane and Underfaker are two examples where this type of gimmick failed horribly. It must also be said, that the gimmick in WCW was unremarkable, it was amusing, and even at times genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, but the character was always going to be stuck as a comedy guy due to the nature of the gimmick. The fact the gimmick got over so well in Japan is surely a mystery. Jeff Farmer was not Steve Borden in the ring, he was competent but largely average, yet somehow he still was adored by the fans. The character offers an insight into just how absurd WCW could be, even after the supposed 'reality-based' stories began.