If I had a shiny nickel for every single time that the WWE gave us a controversial segment, storyline or character, I might be a few dollars richer than I am. Quite a few dollars, though. It is absolutely no secret at all that Vince McMahon probably craves a good controversy every now and then. Heck, he’ll even feed off of other controversies around the world! Remember a few months ago when Trish Stratus and Shelton Benjamin took part in a spoof of the infamous NFL incident where Nicolette Sheridan (of TV’s wildly popular Desperate Housewives) took part in a segment with an NFL player? It caused a ruckus, and one week after the incident, the WWE was there to spoof it. I don’t think Saturday Night Live or MADtv even spoofed it, but the WWE was there to capitalize immediately.
The truth of the matter is that the WWE lives and breathes on controversy. Many of us will stare in disbelief at what the WWE gives us some weeks, but if it’s controversial enough, the media begins talking about the WWE. And, can you guess why it’s advantageous to the WWE when the media spews negative publicity all over the WWE? You’re right if you said that negative publicity is STILL publicity. If all the news websites are reporting about the latest news-maker in WWE (in our most current case, Muhammed Hassan and the terrorist segment from two weeks ago on WWE Smackdown!), then people who are reading it just might watch the WWE programs to see what the big fuss is truly about. For every “Oh lord, Barbera! Isn’t that terrible that WWE is making fun of terrorist attacks” (which they are NOT, but I’m mimicking what some do when they twist this stuff around), there are just as many “Wow, the balls on those guys. We gotta tune in to see this!”. Am I right? You better believe it.
So, I have decided to take a look at a few controversies that have arisen over the years in WWE. My knowledge of the early WWE product (the 1980s and 1990s) is not extensive, however I plan to cover what I can that is most recent. Some you’ll remember, and some you might not, but I do expect most of my readers will remember every single controversy. I’m not simply looking at media attention. Instead, I will also focus on the stir it caused with fans, as well as how controversial these things really were.
Katie Vick
I have to start with our good friend, Katie. Why? Because even if you only started watching wrestling one week before this Katie Vick business started, you’ll probably still remember it to this day. I’ll take you back to the Fall of 2002, when Triple H’s dominance as a heel was just beginning. One of his first feuds was with the Big Red Machine, a then-masked Kane. We began hearing about Kane’s past, and a gruesome murder that he was apparently to blame for, and Katie Vick was born… sort of. After all, Katie was dead. So, Triple H rambled on and on about Katie Vick, as the fans stared at him, dumbfoundedly. Were we supposed to know who Katie Vick was? Did we want to know? Did we care? “No” is the simple answer to all three questions.
One week, the controversy of Katie Vick took an immense turn for the worst when Triple H took part in a segment that even repulsed Mick Foley, and made us live with the Hardcore Legend for quite a few months before he would even show his face in WWE again. Triple H, dressed up as quite the convincing Kane, proceeded to film a segment inside a funeral home with Katie Vick’s body inside a coffin. The segment was supposed to be from 1992 (I think). Triple H (still as Kane) got into the coffin and pretended to have sex with the dead body (known as necrophilia), and at one point, picked up raw meat in his hand, and proclaimed “Hey look! I just screwed your brains out!”. To say it was a low, even for WWE, is saying a lot. It’s even way beneath Triple H, and this is a guy a lot of people despise.
It caused a stir amongst fans that no one could really explain. Even someone like myself, who could see the humor in anything, thought the segment was in poor taste. I remember being a youngster myself, and tuning in to World Wrestling Federation every single Saturday afternoon, before I discovered Monday Night Raw. I would have never expected someone like Ric Flair (back in the 1990s) or Sid Justice (Vicious’s WWE moniker) to pull a grotesque stunt such as that. So, I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like for a little kid to witness this, have no clue what it was, and ask his or her parents about it. We know certain kids are just that curious, and I can imagine a parent refusing to allow their child to watch WWE anymore. The WWE lost viewers with that, both young and old, and that was one time where I could not stand behind WWE. It was once where I could not disagree with those who were outraged and disgusted.
The Montreal Screwjob
Talk about controversial! I don’t think we will EVER hear the end of this. “You screwed Bret” is a chant that isn’t even exclusive to Montreal or Canada anymore. If you live under a rock, or just need a quick summary of the events, I’ll let you know what happened: Bret Hart didn’t want to lose the title to HBK at Survivor Series. He didn’t know he was going to. He did. He was pissed. That is basically making one long, confusing story into a short one. All of the anger and none of the complicated history.
People still talk about this to this day. People in Montreal probably still have bad feelings over this controversy. Bret Hart eventually went to WCW, but was he as big as he was in WWE? I don’t think so, but I’m only going by different sites that I have read, and different sources who seem to agree that WCW wasn’t much of a competition to WWE in later years. He was barely signed with the company for three years before it was gone, anyway. Will Bret EVER be back with the WWE? We’re all fairly certain, but you never know, right? Imagine Bret showing up one week on TNA? If TNA shows serious signs of life on SpikeTV, it could happen.
Billy and Chuck: The Ambiguously Gay Duo
Are they? Aren’t they? It was hard to tell. Well, they had music that the divas would even pass on. Rico was one of those guys where you don’t even need to ask if he was gay (I admit I was surprised to find out he wasn’t in real life, so kudos to him). One week, Chuck answered our questions, and popped the question to Billy. It was one of those “What the hell?” moments. Not because they’re gay. I got no problem with that, but this isn’t where I talk about that. I’m talking about doing something like that in WWE. It’s just a matter that they purposely rubbed it in our faces, like a stinky sock. Just to create a stir, as usual. WWE does that a lot, if you hadn’t noticed at all.
So, the big wedding finally came. I admit, it was an incredibly well-planned segment, thanks to Eric Bischoff playing the old guy who was going to marry Billy and Chuck. I remember it like it was yesterday, don’t you? “… whether it’s 50 years… sixteen months… or three minutes! … wait a minute…” That remains one of my favorite moments. But, to the point, WWE did this to create a stir, and cause a little controversy. In other words, get people talking. And they did! I can’t imagine being an older wrestling fan, like my grandfather, watching something like that. We know how most of them think, and I can only assume WWE lost a few viewers thanks to that. Did WWE succeed with attracting viewers to the controversy brewing? For a week, maybe. I remember hearing that the episode was one of the more higher-rated episodes, but the ratings didn’t last. This, more or less, made WWE look a bit worse.
So, now I’m going to shift gears, seeing as how I could talk for pages about past WWE controversies, and I might do it someday. But for now, I’m going to talk about the two most recent controversies brewing in WWE: Matt Hardy and Muhammed Hassan.
Matt Hardy: The Shoot? The Work?
They sure pulled the wool over our eyes, didn’t they? Oh, of course you’ll get the lame guy who will shout out “I KNEW IT! I TOLD YOU!!” when he sees Matt Hardy, but this is the same guy who theorizes about every plausible outcome to everything, so he’s going to be right most times, just by chance. The thing I love about this angle is that it shows that WWE is capable of a clever story like this. I don’t know how far back it goes, or when it all began to involve Matt Hardy, but it still is a brilliant thing to do. And with this, WWE is creating a different kind of controversy. Everyone is talking, no one has the answers that they want, and we’re all kept guessing.
Again, in case you’re not watching WWE right now, I’ll fill you in: Matt and Lita dated, Lita cheated on Matt with Edge, Matt got fired, the fans chanted for Matt, some confusing stuff where Matt posted stuff on his website about not coming back, and then he came back unexpectedly on July 11th, and has made two other appearances attacking Edge.
The story is creating such an incredible buzz in the wrestling online community (Internet Wrestling Community, or IWC for short) that even those who hate Matt Hardy are interested in where this will go. This past Monday night, Vince McMahon made a huge announcement concerning Matt Hardy, and has officially announced that he has made a business deal. I think this was a perfect outcome to this situation. The only other plausible ways to continue this would to have an unsanctioned match between the two, which wouldn’t really give much explanation to Matt’s future, or force Bischoff to sign on Matt to compete at Summerslam. Vince wanting to add fuel to the fire was a perfect reason to bring Matt Hardy back.
But, the controversy still does not stop there. During Matt’s return segment, he made it clear how Amy Dumas (aka Lita) was “married” to Kane “on TV” and that she came home to Matt every night, not with Kane. Some feel a bit uncomfortable with this, because it’s basically promoting that nothing we’re watching is real. We know it’s not, but it’s not something that the WWE is supposed to mention like that, especially in the middle of a heated feud. However, I feel it adds more to the storyline. It gives this feud a much more real, personal feel, that makes most of the audience feel that the match is going to be a real fight with a lot more riding on the match than just who wins and who loses. The controversy surrounding this feud is amazing, and it’s adding a lot that even average wrestling fans, who don’t read internet wrestling sites, are buzzing about.
Either way, it’s a prominent storyline on Raw that is really exciting. Few things seem to be going well lately with Raw and Smackdown, but Matt Hardy is a bright spot on Raw. I want to know what is going to happen next, and there isn’t a lot that is doing that for me lately. I don’t really care about Cena and Jericho, simply because they’re playing Cena up to be the next Austin, and that annoys me. If Jericho wins the title, I will be more than pleased, but if Triple H comes back soon, I don’t see a Jericho title win happening. Unless Hunter does the RIGHT thing and returns as a babyface. And another storyline that makes me want to change the channel is Eddie and Rey. Great matches, but this is far too long and drawn out, mainly because Eddie has not won a match. A feud cannot live without both people getting wins here and there.
Muhammed Hassan: The Rise and Fall
Muhammed Hassan and Khosrow Daivari have been embroiled in controversy since their “Arab” angle began a few months ago. Many talked about these promos that aired, calling down Americans for their treatment towards Arabs and Arab-Americans, as well as mentioning September 11th, something that is not easy to talk about in any situation, let alone in a wrestling promo.
When the duo debuted, it was much of the same stuff that we had heard before in their feuds with Chris Jericho, Shelton Benjamin, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, and Shawn Michaels. Hassan and Daivari became a dominant pair in the WWE, with an undefeated streak for Hassan (up until his last RAW match against John Cena, a match that even Hassan forgot when he ranted about being undefeated later on his brief home of Smackdown). It seemed like Hassan was in line for a title reign in the near future.
It all changed with a match involving Daivari and The Undertaker. It was expected that Daivari would not defeat The Undertaker, but no one expected anything else to come of the aftermath of the match. Four henchmen suddenly invaded the ring, with black masks over the heads, and attacked Undertaker. I didn’t really care, so I skipped ahead of the show (I taped it that night) and didn’t pay any mind to it. Apparently, not everyone ignored the segment.
Within the next two or three weeks, the media was lambasting the WWE for playing such an segment on their show, even though UPN was partially to blame as well for airing the segment. The big reason for the uproar? The segment aired the same day as the tragic terrorist strike in London. Of course, the segment was planned and taped before the terrorist attack in London, but UPN and WWE still decided to air it. I don’t support the idea that the four henchmen were supposed to resemble terrorists, but the WWE never did say that the four men were terrorists, or playing terrorists for that matter. It wasn’t long before the WWE made the choice to nix the Muhammed Hassan character, killing his current chances of becoming a WWE champion.
Hassan has been a favorite of mine in the heel department for quite some time now. Who else could get the crowds booing someone like he got the crowd to boo himself? The controversial promos he had, and the words he belted out each and every week eventually ended up being the nails in the coffin for Hassan, with the “terrorist” angle putting an end to Muhammed Hassan. We won’t know if Hassan would have been the man to take down Batista. Because of WWE’s choice to create the segment, and UPN’s decision to air it, we have to sit through another main-event with JBL, who is giving Triple H quite a run for his money in main-eventing far too many PPVs.
If I had my way, Hassan would not have left. It’s a sad state of affairs when people cannot establish reality from fiction. It was a character created by the WWE, to be a heel. A bad guy. We have plenty of heels who consistently mock the country, as well as mock certain hometowns (JBL’s forté). Hassan was in the right place at the wrong time. I think this character could have flourished in a few years, but we’re just so close to September 11th and the War in Iraq. In a few years, Hassan could have strived, but it’s almost a scenario of being “too soon” for the American audiences. I could establish fact from fiction, but I’m not saying that I am right. I’m just saying that I wish the people could have accepted Hassan as just a heel. It certainly would be interesting to know if Hassan would have stayed if he was the Arab-American being beaten every single week, instead of being a dominant force. That last sentence is just something to think about. Nothing serious. Just food for thought, I guess.
So, while controversy is a small part of WWE, almost at all times, it almost makes WWE continue working as a major machine. It runs on talent, on fans, on money, on ideas, but the WWE also runs on controversy. Vince said it himself last Monday when he said that when he sees a fire, he just has to pour gasoline on it. Some controversies attract attention to a certain feud or single talent (Matt Hardy), while other controversies attract media attention, almost always in a negative way (Muhammed Hassan). But whether the attention is good or bad, WWE seems to eat it up, and continue to grow. Who knows what’s next to come? Anything can and will happen in the WWE, on Raw or on Smackdown!, and it’s a guarantee that there are plenty more controversies to conjure up within the WWE, for all watchful eyes to see. There’s controversy in the World, there is controversy in Wrestling, and by God, within the WWE, controversy is Entertainment.
All feedback is welcome and encouraged, whether it’s positive or negative. Any questions or comments can be sent to carl_macqueen@ns.sympatico.ca and will be responded to eventually. Due to other business in my life, it’s hard to sit down and respond completely to an e-mail, especially an e-mail with a big question or several comments, so please be patient and I will get back to you.
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