Ever seen the Tim Burton movie Beetlejuice? Well, Art Barr did, and with the help of WCW, he decided to turn the Michael Keaton character into a wrestling gimmick. Actually, I believe Barr had done the character for quite some time in the Pacific Northwest territory.
The problem with all this wasn’t Barr’s ability – he was very agile in the ring and a lot of fun to watch from a wrestling standpoint. In fact, all of his matches as The Juicer are worth watching due to the very different style Barr employed as compared to the rest of the WCW roster.
No, the problem was that this was early 90’s WCW, and wrestling was secondary to silly gimmicks. They stole Spiderman (Arachnaman), so I guess they figured that movie executives would never notice them blatantly copying the crazy cadaver.
For the part, Barrr would basically be a wise guy, who would often spray opponents with silly string. Sometimes, he’d pull off his doo rag, and the baby powder would fly. Of course, we were led to believe that was dust (he’s dead, you know!)…
It’s too bad Barr arrived in WCW at the time he did, being saddled with The Juicer character. He would have a made a great addition to the hot WCW Cruiserweight division of the mid 90’s. Matches with him taking on Ultimo Dragon, Eddy Guerrero, or Dean Malenko would have been a lot of fun to watch.
Instead, he got paired up with Big Trucker Norm.
Sadly, Barr died in the late 90’s.
Even more sad, he gained most of his US fame as The Juicer.