World Championship Wrestling once spent millions on a gimmick ripping off Mortal Kombat’s Sub-Zero, before Midway threatened to sue and WCW immediately gave up: 'We were gonna lose big, like real big'

If there's one thing that the now-defunct World Championship Wrestling was known for in the 1990s, it was wasting absolutely colossal amounts of billionaire Ted Turner's cash. You could say that the media mogul could afford it, but WCW's spendthrift ways were because it was always something of a vanity project: Turner made his name in cable television and, while he valued the loyal audience and advertising revenue of a WCW, his fatal flaw was being a wrestling fan.

Thus were born the so-called Monday Night Wars of the 1990s, where WCW and Vince McMahon's WWF (later WWE) went head-to-head: the difference being that the WWF had to wash its own face financially, whereas Turner could (and did) bankroll WCW's spending splurges. So one feature of the era was high-profile former WWF stars like Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage jumping ship for obscene amounts of money. Another was chronically terrible creative decisions.

Which brings us to Glacier: a wrestling gimmick that, even by WCW standards, made for terrible viewing and was an exceptional waste of money. It was also an unashamed rip-off of Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero, involved hundreds of thousands of dollars being wasted on pyrotechnics and an appalling costume, and utterly failed to gain any momentum before Midway's lawyers went "erm hold on" and WCW ran away from it as fast as the company could.

In the mid-90s WCW had seen some success by taking 'inspiration' from popular movies, such as when it re-branded the clean-cut babyface Sting as a brooding, gothic character heavily based on Brandon Lee's look in the Crow. As well as being a hugely popular videogame, and one that regularly made headlines, Mortal Kombat had been made into a 1995 movie, which despite being rubbish was a commercial hit.

Roll around 1996 and a wrestler called Ray Lloyd came on the scene, seeming like manna from heaven to WCW manager Eric Bischoff. Lloyd had spent the last few years working in Japan for a promotion that blended martial arts and wrestling, was a legitimate karate champion and black belt, and on his return to the US had been training at the same gym as several WCW wrestlers. He spoke to Diamond Dallas Page (DDP) about wanting to try a wrestling gimmick that was built around loads of martial arts moves, DDP went to Bischoff (who loved martial arts), and after a three hour meeting Bischoff signed Lloyd without even seeing him wrestle.

A fuller version of this story with more behind-the-scenes details can be heard on the excellent Wrestle Me podcast, the hosts of which have an especial talent for bringing out just how boneheaded and hilarious most of WCW's decision-making was.

WCW decided to spend hundreds of thousands on this gimmick, with Lloyd himself later admitting that the thought process behind the character was little more than "let's capitalize off the popularity of Mortal Kombat." First, it spent $35,000 having the legit prop house AFX Studios design a Sub-Zero-style costume; it then decided that wasn't nearly enough money to waste and asked them to come up with a spectacular ring entrance.

Glacier's entrance truly was special: blue lasers covered the arena, fake snow poured down from the ceiling, and blue lights illuminated him as he makes a show of taking off his costume. The cost? Lloyd later said he was told by WCW producer Keith Mitchell the full setup cost $400,000, and every time it was deployed another $10,000 in fees for the technicians who set it up.

Glacier was gradually introduced to the WCW audience in video vignettes that explicitly stole lines and imagery from the Mortal Kombat movie. Glacier promo: "In each of us burns the fury of a warrior." Mortal Kombat: "In each of us burns the soul of a warrior." Burns. The character's gimmick is ice. Anyone? Never mind. Such promos were the typical way of introducing a new wrestler that the company thought could be a star, and Glacier's ran from April 1996 until his debut in September that year.

Perhaps the most unbelievable road not travelled in this bizarre story, however, involves the name. WCW knew what the gimmick was, they knew what they wanted him to look like, but they didn't know what he would be called. A list of around 150 cold-themed names was made up, and one that came under serious consideration was Stone Cold.

For the non-wrestling fans, the WWF's 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin was shortly going to become the biggest wrestling star of the late 1990s, and a key difference-maker in the Monday Night Wars. By all accounts he came up with the name in 1996 after his wife told him to drink his tea before it got "stone cold." In a parallel universe, WCW would have already chosen that name for the ill-fated Glacier.

For his part, Bischoff wanted the name Cryonic, which is somehow even more fucking stupid than Glacier. Even WCW's clueless creatives baulked at that, though they gave Bischoff the sop of Glacier's finishing move being the "cryonic kick." Which is just, like, a karate kick.

Glacier was supposed to make his debut in July 1996, but another WCW gimmick kneecapped the character: Hulk Hogan's infamous heel turn and the emergence of the NWO stable. For a time the NWO was WCW's golden ticket, but it was also based on the illusion of authenticity and realism, with the likes of Hogan, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash playing exaggerated versions of themselves: in such a context, the Glacier gimmick looked as corny and cartoonish as it was.

The debut was pushed back, but WCW had already sunk so much money into Glacier that there was no question of an about-turn. Instead he made his debut on one of WCW's lesser shows against a jobber called The Gambler, before beginning a mid-card feud with Big Bubba Rogers (best-known for his time in the WWF as the Big Boss man).

Then someone at Midway noticed.

"I’ll never forget it," Lloyd would later recall, "'Come to my office.' It’s like the principal calling you. I thought I was in trouble! I walked into Bischoff’s office and was told, 'Midway is threatening a lawsuit.' I thought my career was over. and that it was nice while it lasted.

"I asked him if we were going to fight it. I remember [Bischoff] answering, 'You know, there’s nothing I like better than a good fight, but if we fight this, we’re going to lose and lose big.'"

Well, at least Bischoff was right about that. Lloyd suggested they change the costume, and Bischoff shot back "I can’t afford another thirty-five grand!" So Lloyd took the existing costume back to AFX and had it altered to a legally distinct Sub-Zero.

After a mere four matches, Glacier's look, entrance, and entrance music were all changed. Unbelievably, WCW wasn't done, and decided the solution was to create a world-within-a-world of WCW characters who only fought each other, with Glacier's primary feud being with… Mortis, a character that is basically a legally distinct version of Mortal Kombat's Reptile. Presumably Scorpion would've been too on-the-nose.

WCW began a ludicrous feud that revolved around Mortis stealing Glacier's helmet, which culminated in a match where Glacier won in just under two minutes. The money spent to get to a two-minute squash match was eye-watering, but maybe what's even more amazing is that WCW persisted with the gimmick and kept throwing money at something that was clearly never going to work.

Glacier would see out the remainder of his WCW career on the lower midcard as part of a small stable including Mortis, Wrath, and Ernest 'the Cat' Miller (the latter included purely because he also did martial arts moves). His last few months at the company would see the Glacier gimmick finally abandoned, and Lloyd appearing as some sort of sports coach.

You could say that Glacier encapsulates everything that's great and terrible about this era of wrestling. Right in the middle of its hottest-ever period, when the NWO has upended the business and WCW should be flying high, it's wasting what must have amounted to over a million pounds on a Temu version of a Mortal Kombat character, and just refusing to admit that it isn't working.

And while Glacier has to go down as a terrible gimmick, Ray Lloyd himself seems like a lovely bloke and admirably phlegmatic about the whole thing. Very few wrestlers in this era had creative control, and this comes across as a Bischoff vanity project that got out of hand. There's a great documentary called Beyond the Mat that shows the WWF's Vince McMahon speaking to potential signing Darren Drozdov, and lighting up when he hears the poor guy can vomit on cue. The gimmick McMahon came up with for Drozdov was Puke, a wrestler who vomits on defeated foes.

So it possibly could have been worse for Lloyd.

“Thanks to everyone who watched me perform, whether you were a fan or a critic," said Lloyd last year. "I’ve learned in this long, great career that the secret to success is going out there and doing your best, and you obviously can’t make everybody happy all the time.

"For people who were critics about my gimmick, well, god bless you for at least watching it and having an honest opinion. And the ones who were fans of the gimmick, thank you because it made my job worth it every night to go out there and be cheered."