The transition from the 80’s to the 90’s was a wild time. Some would say the best of both worlds were colliding and everyone was along for the ride. Part of that ride was RoboCop’s arrival in World Championship Wrestling (WCW). How can we even begin to explain this? Robocop, a fictional character from the movies, was now somehow real and decided to fight crime in a real sports organization that was really just a fictional sports organization.  

RoboCop showed up in World Championship Wrestling during the 1990 Capital Combat: Return of RoboCop pay-per-view event. This bizarre crossover happened mainly for marketing reasons. At the time, Orion Pictures was about to release the movie RoboCop 2. WCW and Orion worked out a promotional tie-in in which RoboCop would make an appearance at the wrestling event to hype up the film.

In the storyline, RoboCop helped Sting, who was one of WCW’s top stars, fend off an attack from the villainous group known as the Four Horsemen. RoboCop came down to ringside, “bent” the bars of a cage to rescue Sting, and helped him chase the bad guys off.

Fans and critics heavily mocked the segment, and it’s still remembered as one of the most embarrassing and absurd moments in pro wrestling history. The “action” was slow and obviously fake. RoboCop was being portrayed by a guy in a heavy suit (probably not Peter Weller) who could barely move.

So what’s the big deal? Fort starters, RoboCop is a fictional cyborg from a dystopian sci-fi movie — totally out of place in a wrestling environment that, even by 1990s standards, tried to maintain some realism. Arn Anderson was a major member of the Four Horsemen and one of the guys involved in the RoboCop segment. He thought the whole idea was “embarrassing” and made wrestling look like a “clown show”. Arn described the whole thing as “cartoonish” and something that hurt WCW’s credibility, especially when the company was trying to be seen as a more serious alternative to WWF’s over-the-top characters at the time.

Arn Anderson has gone on the record during his “ARN” podcast to share his true thoughts about the infamous RoboCop moment:

“I knew it was horsesh*t from the get-go. How do you fight a robot? Are we supposed to punch him and knock his head off? Are we supposed to sell for him? Run from him? He can’t move! It was one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever been part of.”

Not pile on, but professional wrestling historian extortionate Jim Cornette also did not hold back when talking about the subject on an old “Kayfabe Commentaries” podcast.  

“It was the stupidest goddamn thing I’d ever seen. Who in the f*** thought RoboCop would draw money in wrestling? It made everyone look like idiots — the wrestlers, the announcers, the fans who had to sit through it. I was embarrassed to even be in the same building.”

Even the eternal optimist Sting (who Robocop saved during the segment) had trouble finding the silver lining. During the episode of “WWE Untold: Sting”, the wrestling icon had this to say about what went down that fateful day:

“I was standing there thinking, ‘Man, I hope nobody I know is watching this.”