Today In Wrestling History 8/13: Sting Meets The Black Scorpion, ECW Chair Throwing Incident, & More

* 25 years ago in 1990, the substance (for lack of a better term) of The Black Scorpion's feud with Sting kicked off at a WCW TV taping (for Power Hour and the eponymous WCW show) at the Georgia Mountains Center in Gainesville, Georgia. While there had been some promotion of Sting defending his NWA World Heavyweight Championship against a masked unknown named The Black Scorpion, this was when the story elements fell into place. Though they didn't explain why an unknown masked man was getting a world title shot.

The gist of the first video was of a hooded man in silhouette with a seemingly disguised voice (it was actually Ole Anderson) saying that Sting knew him years earlier, who implied he was now horribly disfigured. The key reference was to "California in 1986." To fans who had long memories and/or read the independent newsstand magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated, that planted the seed that The Black Scorpion was none other than Sting's original tag team partner and the then current WWF Champion, The Ultimate Warrior. It was incredibly vague, but there were not really any other ways to interpret it.

That kept going when a blindfolded Gordon Solie got to interview The Black Scorpion in his lair several weeks later, where The Black Scorpion requested that Solie ask Sting about Tulsa and gauge his reaction. Tulsa was the home of Bill Watts' Mid-South Wrestling/Universal Wrestling Federation, where Warrior and Sting were teaming as The Blade Runners. The permanently split up when Warrior left the promotion, with Sting staying and Warrior leaving for World Class Championship Wrestling in Dallas.

The whole thing went on for months, and I'm sure we'll talk more about it as we get to some of the major milestones.

Also on that taping, there was the beginning of an odd thread (it wasn't even a storyline) involving Thunderbolt Patterson and the Steiner Brothers. Thunderbolt had been making appearances for a couple months, primarily doing guest commentary and acting as a guest babyface manager in Atlanta, where he had a history as a draw. During the Junkyard Dog vs. Dutch Mantell match at this taping, he sat in on commentary and talked about how he was interested in managing the Steiner Brothers. This went on for several weeks and felt exceedingly random to most viewers. He did manage the Steiners on a single house show at the Omni, but most fans weren't in Atlanta and didn't care.

It turned out that Ole Anderson, then the booker, had brought in Thunderbolt as a favor to Patterson, who he was friends with. Later, when Patterson sued WCW for racial discrimination, he testified in a deposition to the effect that he was the Steiners' actual long-term on-screen manager, a la Ted DiBiase in the NWO era. He also reads like he's cutting a promo for several hours during the deposition.

* 21 years ago in 1994, ECW ran the first annual Hardcore Heaven show at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was built around the second ECW appearance of Cactus Jack, who was still under contract to WCW (and one half of their tag team champions when he first appeared) taking on Terry Funk (who was also splitting time between both promotions, though he was a heel in WCW and a babyface in WCW) in something of a dream match.

The match ended after a few minutes when The Public Enemy ran in, as they had been feuding with Funk for months. Cactus made the save and the babyfaces got the better of them when Funk beckoned the fans for something. Within a few seconds, the "mutants" of the ECW Arena were throwing large quantities of chairs into the ring. He had done something similar a month earlier, but it stopped before it got out of control. This time? The Public Enemy were buried by dozens of chairs as the ring announcer begged the fans to stop.

It became an iconic moment in ECW history, though thankfully it never happened again. A clip of it was quickly added to the opening montage of ECW's syndicated TV show, where it stayed for several years as the climactic moment before the montage ended with a shot of the then-current ECW Champion holding the belt.

The co-main event saw Sabu defeating 2 Cold Scorpio. While a good match, it was neither their best effort (that would be the match at ECW's Cyberslam '96 card), nor their most famous match in 1994. That distinction goes to a match on an independent show where the ring broke, but they continued to do their regular match with all of their usual big highspots.