Sorry if I sound like a total mark, but to me, Too Cold Scorpio is THE MAN.
Or at least he was.
Or could have been.
Or should have been.
In the early to mid 90’s, Scorpio absolutely tore the house down every time I saw him wrestle. He pulled off insane aerial maneuvers the likes of which I had never seen. I remember watching him in the early 90’s WCW, and thinking this…THIS…was what wrestling would be like in the late 90’s and beyond. And this was the guy to lead the way. A follow up stint in ECW seemed to confirm my thoughts. If ever there was a guy who couldn’t miss, it was him.
And then he hit the WWF, and that was that.
He became Flash Funk, and he was dressed up like a pimp. Except he wasn’t a pimp. I think, perhaps, Blade Braxton summed it up best: “He reminded me of a ‘kinder, gentler Godfather’ for a pre-Attitude era WWF that still was stuck in the cartoony age.” It’s funny, because I remember thinking the exact same thing when I first saw him. And when he sashayed down to the ring with his Funkettes, I was just dying for him to say, “Them’s my bitches.”
Vince is always looking for that next Hulk Hogan. With THAT catchphrase, he’d have had him.
Instead, his whole claim to fame was that he was, well, funky. We weren’t supposed to care about his talent inside the ring, or whether he was actually a pimp or whatever, but rather on his DANCE MOVES. In case someone didn’t catch onto the fact that Flash was, in fact, FUNKY, his music began with a woman wailing, “Oh Flash, you’re sooooo funky!” Little room for argument there. Following this proclamation of funkiness, a riff sounding as though it had been pulled right off a Sly and the Family Stone LP blared over the loudspeakers in the arena, as he and the Funkettes would hip hop down to the ring, shakin’ their groove thangs all the way.
Now a rant, if I may.
Say what you will about the Funkettes, but at least they did SOMETHING. And they were actually pretty decent dancers. I mean, sure, they were no Nitro Girls (snicker), but they could cut a mean rug nonetheless. Contrast that with the billion nameless generic bimbos on WWE TV today, who do NOTHING and there’s zero reason to care about them. In fact, I can even now, ten or so years later, tell you the Funkettes’ names (Tracy and Nadine), which is more than I can say for half of the current “Diva” crew.
Or maybe I just like seeing them shake their asses.
Oh yeah, that’s it, baby.
SHAKE IT!
SHAKE IT FOR RD!
Whew! I think I need a cigarette.
Sadly, though, the Funkettes were nixed shortly after their arrival due to a company wide budget cut. Look, I know that Vince has to pay the bills, but canning those keisters was a very poor way to save a couple of bucks. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for it. Boo Vince!
As for Flash Funk himself, he was kept on, but he may as well not have been. The company did nothing with the guy, as he was did a continuous string of jobs. He did so many jobs, in fact, that it was turned into an angle that saw Funk align himself with Al Snow and Bob Holly in the JOB Squad, a rag tag team of losers. He also wrestled from time to time with Terry Funk (the joke being that Flash Funk and Terry Funk were somehow related), but did nothing of note. Finally, the Flash Funk character was dropped, as he returned to his Too Cold Scorpio roots. By that point, though, it was too late, and Scorpio himself was eventually canned, with the rumor being that he failed a drug test.
These days, Scorp is actually back in WWE, although he has yet to make an appearance on Raw, Smackdown, or ECW. His most famous moment in the US in the past several years wasn’t in a wrestling ring, but rather a mention in Mick Foley’s book, with the Mickster claiming that Funk was famous in the locker room for his gigantic weiner.
Oh my GOD have you seen the size of my penis?
I guess there’s a lot worse things to be famous for.