Remember When. . .WCW Made, Then Broke, Perry Saturn’s Career?

The year was 1998.

I was 14 and marking out hard for World Championship Wrestling. Goldberg was one of the biggest pushed champions ever, their Cruiserweight Division was pushing the envelope, and the nWo factions drama was playing out to my enjoyment. How could it go wrong?

Most people will look to the WCW Monday Nitro proceeding Starrcade 1998 and point their fingers squarely at the Fingerpoke of Doom. While that swerve was definitely one that began to make me scratch my head, that was somehow not the moment that made me turn my back on WCW and propel me toward watching WWF.

If you remember Perry Saturn, odds are you are unlikely to remember him for the same reason that I try to remember him: the amazing feud between himself and Raven over the course of the summer of 1998.

I was as much enthralled with this feud as I was with nWo Hollywood, nWo Woflpac, and the attempt to reorganize the Four Horsemen, or the return of the Warrior — which in retrospect, was another red flag in the WCW creative offices. So when Fall Brawl/War Games 1998 featured a match where Saturn had a chance to disband Raven’s Flock stable, I was excited to say the least. That match alone was enough to push me to get the Pay Per View ordered.

I was not disappointed. That match had everything you could’ve asked for. This match easily eclipsed every match before and after it in the PPV. At this point, WCW had essentially put Saturn over, and he had full potential to go far in the company.

Let me remind you that we are talking about WCW in the late 90’s, when Saturn’s stock rose after FB/WG, the company sat on the stock and failed to cash in. Over the next few months, Saturn did nothing noteworthy within the company. When creative finally decided to use him, they did so in one of the most insanely idiotic ways ever — a dress match with Chris Jericho. What could go wrong? Well, for starters:

Yes, you’re seeing that right; Saturn lost, and had to wear a dress. Then, to further stick their feet in their mouths, creative decided to not only have him wear a dress for ninety days, but make him continue to do so after the stipulated period, thus turning his gimmick into weird bald transvestite guy.

After that, I was done. I saw WCW take a wrestler, build him up to epic proportions, then almost immediately send his career plummeting six feet under– if you don’t count the time where they had him sit idle enough to make the viewers lose interest after Fall Brawl.

Sadly, Saturn never recovered from the career homicide that was committed upon him. He spent his final days in the WWE, nursing a gimmick that had him fall in love with a mop. Granted, this one was punishment for a legitimate attack on a jobber, but I can’t help but think this was his way of sticking to the man that had permanently relegated him to mid-card status way back in 1999.

So, while this one misstep may not have been the downfall of WCW, it certainly didn’t help. And what might be even worse, it led to the downfall of pretty decent wrestler.