Throughout the history of pro wrestling bookers and promoters have always tried to come up with new, creative and innovative ideas to generate interest in their product. Some ideas have not only succeeded but flourished. Then there are those ideas which initially were innovative but for various reasons, faded away.
For years before Scott Levy’s trek into ECW where he became the self-loathing, depressed, anti-social cult-like leader named Raven, he was pretty much saddled with the same gimmick. He usually portrayed an arrogant, pretentious, spoiled rich kid. It didn’t matter what territory or promotion Levy worked for, he always had pretty much the same above mentioned gimmick. Whether it was Scotty the Body, Scott Anthony, Scotty Flamingo or Johnny Polo, it was the same.
Then came his transformation in ECW as Raven and Levy made a new career for himself. One that went from ECW to WCW, to the WWE to TNA and so forth. While the Raven gimmick revitalized Scott’s career and made him a lot of money, it was also a far stretch from any other persona he played anywhere else during his earlier career. It was World Championship Wrestling that attempted to take the Raven character and make Levy come full circle.
For all of WCW’s bad moves and decisions, many fans felt this was another bad move. I disagree. I felt it added another layer to his character and wanted to see more of how the angle would develop. Sadly, we never got to see the final result. Simply because like every other angle and gimmick during that time frame in WCW, things were dropped just as fast as they were started.
The year was 1999 in WCW, Raven already had a pretty strong run with his Flock faction a couple of years prior. Since the Flock split up, Raven was basically doing the same shtick as he had always done under the gimmick. He was becoming stale and stagnating in the company. A lost soul, which was usually a good thing when it pertained to Raven, but not in this case. WCW creative attempted to freshen up the character by going back into Levy’s past gimmicks.
It started with Raven attacking his “friend” Chris Kanyon, that led a woman to run out to the entrance way and stop him from further beating Kanyon. The woman turned out to be Raven’s mother. Raven’s mom decided that her son needed a break from pro wrestling and convinced him to come home. Chris Kanyon decided it would be a good idea to tag along.
A fancy limousine picked them up and took them to this rather large, palatial estate. The facial expressions by Kanyon during these vignettes were absolutely priceless. Raven at first was reluctant to accept his mother’s fawning over him but it would soon start to slowly disappear. Raven was slowly going back to being Scott, the spoiled rich kid again.
The next couple of weeks, more vignettes would air with Raven in a robe and slippers, hanging by a large pool or whining to his mother about making him something to eat. We were also introduced to other characters like his sister played by former ECW valet Chastity. Also, a rich, snooty next-door neighbor played by former ECW champion the Sandman. For longtime ECW fans, the site of seeing their beloved Sandman wearing a polo shirt with a sweater tied around his neck must’ve made them nauseous.
Another segment had Raven take the Sandman into the basement and show him his high school yearbook as well as a poster of ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper. Obviously, it had some meaning as the vignette faded to black. What was the Hot Rod’s place in all of this? Sadly, we never got to find out the answer because everything was suddenly dropped. Raven returned to being the old brooding character of old, the Sandman became a watered down version of his ECW character, now known as Hardcore Hak, and there was never another mention of Chastity being Raven’s sister.
So with all of that time and energy wasted on creating another layer to the Raven character, it became like a bad dream. Nothing like that ever happened apparently. It shouldn’t have been too much of a shock then when there was a backstage meeting and Eric Bischoff asked the roster if anyone was unhappy they could leave and quit. Scott Levy was the only one who got up and walked out. While we may never know what the ultimate outcome to those vignettes would have accomplished, all we can do is wonder and think what could have been.
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