Would a Yeti scare you in the middle of a snow storm? What if he was over seven foot tall? Well, he was scary, or tried to be, back in 1995 in WCW. Ron Reis, better known as “The Yeti” was WCW’s resident frozen mummy. A man who was wrapped like a mummy with a backstory of being frozen in a block of ice that he broke out of, then, things got weird.
The Yeti was introduced as an insurance policy for the Dungeon of Doom when Dungeon member, The Giant, took on Hulk Hogan at Halloween Havoc. The positive about this? At least the mummy man was apart of a Halloween themed show. The negative? Everything else. Yeah, much like many spooky gimmicks in wrestling, if they’re not done right, then they’re just plain bad and it’s not easy to do it right all the time. And quickly, it seemed WCW knew they were on the wrong side of the spooky gimmick.
Shortly after interfering on Hulk Hogan vs. The Giant, WCW realized maybe this wouldn’t work and changed the Mummy look to resemble more of a ninja. However, that didn’t work out so well either. The Yeti, now looking like a masked ninja, was in a Battle Royal at World War 3 in 1995, then went on to wrestle one match on WCW Prime Time in late 1995, then wrestled One Man Gang on WCW Saturday Night in January of 1996. After this, the Yeti was renamed and the gimmick was all over. Reis went on to stick around with WCW for a few more years as various other gimmicks, but the Yeti, sadly for him, is probably the one he’s most famous for. Tony Schivone tried his hardest to put over The Yeti as an actual terrifying being when he first came around, but like many gimmicks in WCW, it was a dud. But, if there’s any one who was a kid in 1995 and was actually scared of The Yeti, please, let us know!
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