WILW: The KISS Demon

So at some point, someone (Eric Bischoff) in WCW thought, “You know what would really get over with the kids these days? A KISS Demon. Because in 1998 there is no hotter rock band than KISS.” And boy were they wrong. The KISS concert to introduce The Demon here was one of the least watched segments in WCW history, which is saying something for a company that had David Arquette as its champion for a time. Had the debut gone better, there was to be an entire KISS themed stable with each member of the band getting a wrestling counterpart. Thankfully, all we had to suffer through was this one guy and his list of shitty matches.

Dale Torberg, the man behind the demon, seems like a good dude. First of all, he is from New Jersey, the greatest state in the union. Secondly, he is currently a strength coach for the Chicago White Sox and has been a part of two championship baseball teams, The aforementioned Sox and the Marlins. After the sale of WCW to WWE, Torberg retired and went to work for the MLB. And third of all, he was able to erase some of the KISS Demon stain when he appeared with a bunch of Sox players in TNA after they won the world series. There were some good segments on TNA TV involving Torberg, and he had a few decent matches for them. More segments at least than Torberg had with WCW. He lost his debut match and then most of his matches after that. He flopped, hard. KISS has always existed just this side of Horror/Sci-Fi, and while it may have made sense on paper, in actuality it was just fucking stupid. So check the videos below and revel in the awful. And make sure to check back next week when we look at another terrible gimmick. Until then…