The remnants of an un-commissioned WCW cartoon series have been discovered online to the amusement of long-time wrestling devotees.
In 1999, unbeknown to a large majority of their fanbase, World Championship Wrestling planned to halt their steady decline by finding new ways to connect with their audience. While other various forms of media were discussed, one of the ways the company came up with was a cartoon series along the lines of He-Man and The Masters of the Universe.
The series was to feature an armour clad Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart and a plucky teenage Eric Bischoff battling intergalactic forces on a weekly basis, but thanks to the loss of revenue the company experienced plus other varying factors, the show never made air.
Now, Twitter user @allan_cheapshot has unearthed some of the lost designs from the show which range from evil villain Raxx Calibre to the original design for Bret Hart himself.
WCW apparently had plans to do an animated show in 1999. Nothing was ever officially greenlit, there was concept art produced for one idea.
Another idea was going to be produced by Eli Roth. It was going to be called 'Chowda Heads' and would air between segments on Nitro. pic.twitter.com/tRK7Az1Db7
— Allan (@allan_cheapshot) January 2, 2021
Though the series never went ahead, WCW did dip their toes into the animation pool very briefly under the Vince Russo regime with a show produced by noted Hollywood director, Eli Roth. The programme, named Chowdaheads, was aimed to air during Monday Nitro but only one episode ever saw the light of the day.
There have been successful attempts at wrestling animation, however. The most prevalent was Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling during the boom period of the industry in the late eighties and of course Camp WWE, which currently airs on the WWE Network.