We all remember the Misfits in Action: Hugh G Rection, Corporal Cajun, Private Major Stash…
And you might be thinking, It’s about time Misfits in Action made it onto WrestleCrap.
Well, maybe it is, but that time is not today. Because if you thought the Misfits in Action were bad, wait until you see the Misfits in action.
Uh, these guys:
And what did the notorious horror punk band have to do with wrestling? Well, nothing, until the fall of 1999. That’s when Vampiro, on a break from the Insane Clown Posse, decided he really, really needed another group of face-painted musicians of dubious wrestling talent to back him up.
If the spooky foursome had simply accompanied Vampiro to the ring or played some songs, that would have been one thing. A pointless thing, yes, but unremarkable.
I mean, they looked ridiculous enough hanging backstage with Mike Tenay, with sour pusses and haircuts like a sting ray’s ass.
But soon they were mixing it up in the ring, bumping for Vampiro’s opponents. Often, the Misfits’ selling was transparently phony…
…like in these kicks from Alex Wright. Jerry Only didn’t look so much like he was getting beaten up, but like he was a mime pretending to get beaten up.
Delayed reactions plagued the Misfits’ WCW run, like this chair shot from Oklahoma.
Sometimes, each Misfits would sell badly in a completely different way. Here, the first Misfit got yanked by an invisible wire half a second after getting punched.
Though the second guy took a fairly decent fall, you could practically hear the third guy saying, “Ow, my face.”
And the fourth Misfit just slipped.
But this was far from the worst incident. Once, the Misfits, perhaps to promote the new, flawed WCW Mayhem video game, actually altered the hit detection of real life. Buff Bagwell threw three punches, and not a single one came even close to connecting. And regardless, the Misfits respectively:
- fell like a sack of potatoes
- belly-flopped to the arena floor
- fainted like a Southern belle with a case of the vapors
Even the referee got caught up in the in(s)anity, catching the gentlest of strays from Bagwell, throwing a punch of his own, then tumbling to the mat.
You’ve got to wonder how much better the Misfits would have fared had they brought back their original lead singer, deathmatch icon John Zandig.
Sometimes, the Misfits sold like pros, like when the Wall dropped Dr. Chud right on his neck.
But in general, the Misfits could take it just as well as they could dish it out—
—that is, very poorly.
Jerry Only in particular threw the flimsiest punches this side of George Gulas…
…which is a shame, because he was the only member to wrestle a one-on-one match. A cage match, in fact, against Dr. Death Steve Williams in Steve’s first WCW match in seven years.
Only looked absolutely lost at times…
…but thanks to the escape-the-cage rule, he actually beat Williams when Dr. Death threw him into the door…
…allowing him to fall flat on his face to victory. The fans, but not the announcers, understood that Jerry Only had won. They hated it, but they understood it.
Williams and Only would meet the next week in a tag match, but rather than letting Dr. Death get his win back against the 40-year-old bassist…
…Ed “Oklahoma” Ferrara booked himself to pin Vampiro.
There was also a handicap match pitting Vampiro and all four Misfits against Berlyn and The Wall. In this match, whose rules were never explained, all four Misfits were legal at once if one of them tagged in.
Also, Vampiro could tag in while inside the ring.
Despite the presence of four mooks with no wrestling career ahead of them, it was once again Vampiro who ate the pin.
The macabre punk band’s main feud in WCW was, naturally, with Oklahoma.
When the Misfits pictured themselves in wrestling, they probably didn’t imagine fighting a TV writer pretending to be an announcer from a rival promotion. But fight him they did, variously dousing him in barbecue sauce…
…stealing his hat…
…and imprisoning him in a shark cage.
The worst part of all was that, whenever the Misfits were around, Oklahoma always had to do his obnoxious commentary. This even applied when Oklahoma himself wrestled.
Still, he was the only announcer who bothered learning the Misfits’ names (Jerry Only, Michale Graves, Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, and Ed Grimley).
At the end of the band’s run, things took a dark turn when they harassed and belittled Daffney backstage…
…then accosted her at a gas station. It seems the “Last Caress” singers had a hidden misogynistic streak.
The last anyone saw of the Misfits in WCW, Jerry Only was getting stomped by David Flair.
Hey, if Steve Williams could put over his in-ring inferior, so could Jerry.