Back in 1976, amid the disco craze, radio DJ Rick Dees released the novelty song, “Disco Duck”.
A collaboration with recording legends His Cast of Idiots, the song dared ask what would happen if Donald Duck went to a club and skirted intellectual property law.
The record unexpectedly hit #1 on the Billboard charts.
Disco fans appreciated the generic-as-hell backing track…
…while disco haters latched onto the biting satirical lyrics.
Disco, disco duck
Try your luck, don’t be a cluck
In fact, if it weren’t for a boneheaded move by his agent, Rick Dees would have gotten this song on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and won a freaking Grammy.
So what did any of this have to do with wrestling? Well, for the next 24 years, nothing at all.
But in September 2000, WCW’s Disco Inferno randomly started carrying a plastic duck around with him. If you looked closely, you could see, “Disqo Duck” scrawled on it in black marker.
Oh yeah, this was when they’d changed his name to Disqo (like Sisqo) and turned him into a wannabe hip-hop aficionado. What better time to reference a decades-old cartoon novelty track?
The Cat was just as confused as us, wondering why Disco Inferno had brought a lawn ornament into his office.
“[It’s] my new visual aid”. Duh!
Disco Inferno then challenged the Cat to a match for the chance to be commissioner for a day. And if he lost, his friends would lose their titles.
If you were following WCW at the time, the next segment would have you thinking you’d somehow missed a month of programming; not only did the plastic duck get his name on the chyron…
…but the announcers wouldn’t shut up about how much they hated this duck, introduced in passing just minutes earlier.
Ernest Miller made quick work of Disco Inferno, meaning Rey Mysterio and Juventud Guerrera were stripped of their tag team titles.
It was nonsensical, yes, but it was just as well. A few weeks later, Juvy would strip himself in that Brisbane hotel lobby and get canned.
Besides making an out-of-place reference to ancient musical crap…
…and making for an ineffective foreign object…
…Disqo Duck served as an excuse to make incredibly lame duck puns. In just its first night, Mark Madden called Disqo a “duckhead” and told The Cat to “duck him up”.
Disco Inferno himself told the crowd to kiss his duck right on the ass…
…which is not even a pun.
Meanwhile, Konnan accused his former ally (and future podcast co-host) of using the duck for yet another, grosser purpose.
Bizarre accusations aside, Disco Inferno’s attachment to the duck was inconsistent. Sometimes he protected the thing with his life and resisted all attempts to be parted with it…
…but sometimes he just left it lying around. Once, Scott Steiner went on a backstage rampage and, finding the plastic duck by an overturned trash can…
…smashed it with a lead pipe as the announcers egged him on. “I hate ducks!” yelled the incensed Big Poppa Pump.
The next Monday, the Filthy Animals brought the same duck to the ring in a sack, challenging Disqo and Alex Wright to a ladder match for the toy.
One thing I loved about old ladder matches is when you’d actually see them put the belt on the cable and watch them raise it up…
…building anticipation for the match and demonstrating the stakes involved.
What a shame that in this match, the stakes were a piece of molded plastic that may or may not have been penetrated by Disco Inferno.
I don’t what was more pathetic: the two guys risking their careers to retrieve a plastic bird they loved so much…
…or the other two guys risking their careers over the same plastic bird they didn’t actually care about.
After four minutes, Konnan retrieved the Disqo Duck in what amounted to an elaborate game of keep-away. But immediately after the match, Disco Inferno stole it away from him…
…rendering the preceding duck-on-a-string match even more pointless.
Disqo and Wright, once known as the Dancing Fools, re-christened themselves the Boogie Knights, leading the announcers to wonder if WCW had cleared the name with Turner legal.
It was, after all, a homophone of Boogie Nights…
…a film you’ll be shocked to find out is not about dancing. (I certainly was. Sorry again, mom)
One name WCW apparently hadn’t cleared was “Disqo Duck” itself, as the prop showed up in the team’s entrance video as, “Disqo Goose”.
Whatever the waterfowl, Disco Inferno brought it all the way to Australia.
It was down under that the plastic bird met its end at the hands and feet of the Harris Brothers. When the Boogie Knights took on “Heavy D” Don Harris and “Hard R” Ron Harris, one twin savaged the duck like it was an Allied soldier…
…elbowing the bird flat and literally goose-stepping on it…
…before finally casting the toy into the crowd, where fans fought over the plastic scrap.
Undaunted, Disqo grabbed a smaller duck from under the ring, smashed a Harris with it, and scored a victory.
Neither duck ever appeared again in WCW, but somewhere in Australia, someone owns a piece of wrestling history they can’t even begin to explain to a normal person.