The entire Kiss Wrestling venture has actually been leaked online by 1wrestling.com as early as April along with their idea of having a Wrestler based on them as well. It was a report on the first talks with WCW's competitors, WWF.
The report is interesting on many levels. For example, it does seem as it was WWF's idea to create a Kiss Wrestler and that it's WWF that first reached out to Kiss. According to Gene Simmons' 2003 "Sex Money Kiss" book, it was Gene who started negotiations with Ed McMahon of WWF, but eventually went with WCW as they offered a better deal
Simmons talked about why he chose WCW over WWF's deal in more detail in an interview with WCW Live Wrestling, unfortunately that audio interview has been lost with time. A mention of it can be seen in an older version of KissAsylum website
On July 13, KissAsylum website reported on the announcement of Kiss' performance on WCW
Now, online there are couple of articles and a reddit post that claim that the original storyline for the Kiss character was to be a son of Satan who turned against his father, and for him to fight with a wrestler Vampiro who was possesed by Satan, culminating in an epic battle on New Years Eve for the fate of the world. I have never seen a verified source of this information. To the contrary, KissAsylum quoted Gene Simmons on July 14 of 1999 in which he reveals a backstory about the Kiss Demon character and it's nothing like what's being reported online. The one thing that is indeed confirmed by Gene Simmons and Eric Bischoff that does check out is that there were suppose to be all 4 Kiss characters introduced gradually one after another
However, in his 2003 book he does say the character was a " guy who had been to hell and back", but the word "Hell" does not start with capital letter so that statement may as well be a metaphor, not taken literally.
MTV reported on the upcoming event and the Kiss Warriors storyline in July
WCW MONDAY NITRO
JULY 26, 1999 EPISODE
Kiss' performance on WCW was very hyped and heavily advertised as THE event on WCW. "The Event" anywhere, period. Still images and short chunks of Kiss’ Shout It Out Loud Live '96 video were shown multiple times over the course of each episode, beginning with July 26th episode of Monday Nitro if I'm not mistaken. At the time I was 13 and living in Poland and never heard of Kiss before. I assumed it's WCW's creation, a new gimmick from WCW. Sure, one would say, "well, didn't you see the packed stadium in those promo clips?" but I attributed it to editing and a "make believe" scripted scenario - new WCW characters who are musicians at the same time (wouldn't be the only ones at the time) whose arrival from make believe tour into WCW ring is being hyped.
Today someone can ask how I could have not heard about Kiss? Well, I wasn't living in United States where they were icons and their 1996 Reunion Tour was the biggest tour of the year and they were in every rock magazine. At the time in Poland, they were non existent. Nobody heard about them. Much later when I was looking for their albums, people working in big music stores inside Malls had no idea and never heard about a band with that name. Poland was just around the corner from joining European Union and within a year, it would be a world difference, but at that time in late 1999, in Poland they were non existent. And they never played there at that point - they had one show scheduled during the massive Reunion Tour but it was one of very, very few that got cancelled due to low ticket sales. And internet wasn't what it was now at all over there yet. It was few months before it became more what it is now and I didn't even know anybody who was online yet at that point. So I didn't know about Kiss and couldn't even know if they are an actual real-life band. But that was also crucial to my hype - that mystique, the lack of information. Just guesses, questions and unknown.
The first time I saw a promo of them, it got my attention, but the promos were just few seconds long so I couldn't tell much from some of them. What I did know, is that whatever WCW is planning with those guys, it's big, because ever since I became a regular WCW viewer, I don't believe I've seen something promoted this hard (the closest would be Hogan vs Warrior rematch). And that creates hype - the promos and commentators' increasing frequency of talking about Kiss' upcoming WCW performance started rubbing in and lo and behold, I went quickly from curiosity to an actual anticipation.
The aforementioned excerpts from Kiss' live music video continued to play multiple times throughout each episode up until the day had come. The commentators also kept reminding the viewers that the performance by Kiss is coming up in Vegas, and the lead commentator Tony Shiavone made it clear nearly every time Kiss was mentioned that he is a long time Kiss Army member since 1976. So every time they showed a few seconds long clip from the video, it was a different part of the song. Once they showed the beginning of the song, I fell in love with that guitar intro and couldn’t get enough of it. Since I was taping every episode, I was able to replay those bits day after day until the next episode, and I kept looking for any I could miss. This way I worked up the hype for myself.
Even thought I knew completely nothing about Kiss yet at this time, I was hooked and immersed in the hype. I got the bug, and got it real bad. Now I wasn't just interested, now I couldn't wait for the performance. I began counting days. But it was still over a month away...
Something else happened in this July 26 episode that at the time no one would ever thought is related to the event in any way. The earliest seed of the new Kiss wrestling character. Giant wrestler Brian Adams, who belonged to an evil nWo gang, was about to intervene in a match between Stevie Ray and Vincent, to tip the favor in his gangmate’s favor. Ray’s brother, Booker T, blocked the path to the ring so that Adams won’t intervene. Instead of trying to fight his way through him, Adams waved his hand, decided it’s not worth it and turned around. How is that Kiss related, it will be clear few episodes later
Next: Chapter 3: The Hype Builds Up - August 1999
