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For many wrestling fans, World Championship Wrestling is either a favorite or least favorite promotion. Thanks to the Monday Night Wars splitting fanbases between the warring WWE and WCW, only one company would come out on top, and thanks to a number of horrible business decisions and bad booking, WCW would fail to dethrone Vince McMahon's Sports Entertainment giant. Looking back on one of the weirder gimmicks of WCW's past, fans can learn about Arachnaman, a Spider-Man parody that WCW created without consent from Marvel Comics. Following legal threats, the gimmick would die a short, quiet death, leading to many not even knowing about the character's very brief history in the company or who was under the mask in the first place.
Arachnaman Was A Bad Spider-Man Ripoff From Early 90s WCW
While there are plenty of wrestlers who feel greatly original or unique, there are plenty of other examples where wrestlers were either influenced or directly ripped off of pre-existing characters. Even for someone as special as Bray Wyatt, his characters have been influenced by former wrestler Waylon Mercy, Max Cady from Cape Fear, Mr. Rogers, and slasher villains of the past. It's not a bad thing, it's just something that tends to happen. Art rips off art and the cycle continues. Looking to wrestling past, WWE and WCW both had examples of this during the 1990s.
Specifically looking towards WCW, the alternative to WWE would create their own version of one of the most popular comic book characters of all time. Not only would they try to cash-in on Spider-Man, but the company would basically rip his costume off completely with a different color scheme. Arachnaman would not last long, thankfully for fans and WCW, as Marvel Comics would step in with threats of legal action, bringing things to an abrupt end. This would not be a creative parody either, as it was just a literal copy of Spider-Man, but executed extremely poorly.
Marvel's Legal Action Killed WCW's Arachnaman Gimmick
Just looking at pictures or videos showing Arachnaman, anyone with knowledge of Spider-Man could understand as to why Marvel Comics would want to take legal action. Creating this character without the permission from Marvel, WCW was shooting themselves in the foot from the jump as the costume was way too similar to Spider-Man's costume. Almost immediately, Marvel would threaten to sue WCW over the likeness rights and thus, Arachnaman's brief time as the Friendly Neighborhood Wrestler would come to an end.
While it would wind up being a smaller story in the grand landscape of WCW's troubled history, this would rank fairly high as a boneheaded decision as all the company had to do was not give him Spider-Man's exact costume. Arachnaman would end up going down in the history books as another gimmick based off pop culture that failed, similar to Glacier, Paul Burchill, and Beaver Cleavage.
A Talented WCW Wrestler Had The Misfortune Of Playing Arachnaman
Looking at who was saddled with the Arachnaman gimmick, it may be a surprising name for some. Brad Armstrong, of the famous Armstrong wrestling family, would be the man tasked with becoming the Spider-Man parody. For those unfamiliar with the surname, Brad Armstrong is the son of "Bullet" Bob Armstrong, a famed NWA star of the past and a WWE Hall of Famer. In turn, Brad is also the brother of Scott Armstrong, Steve Armstrong, and Road Dogg. The family has had its ties to wrestling for generations, with Scott, Brian, Steve, and Brad all coming in around the same time. Road Dogg would find the most mainstream success of the bunch, though looking at Brad here, he would find success across North America during his career.
Winning the WCW Light Heavyweight Championship and the WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Championship during his time with World Championship Wrestling, Brad Armstrong would also earn honors from the Wrestling Observer, scoring 1981's Rookie of the Year Award and 1987's Most Underrated Wrestler. Arachnaman would be given to Armstrong in 1991, though the gimmick would die soon after. He would remain in WCW until 1995 before eventually returning a year later, remaining into 2001.