Wrestling represents arguably the most unique form of televisual entertainment on the planet today. Nowhere else can you see grown men and women engage in a unique blend of sport, soap opera, and gymnastics, all while wearing varying degrees of spandex.
Sports entertainment isn’t supposed to be a reflection of the real world. It gives fans a chance to escape the humdrum of everyday life and watch an eclectic group of larger-than-life muscle-bound characters strut their stuff for our amusement.
That’s part of what put World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) at the forefront of the industry. Throughout the history of WWE, the organisation has demonstrated a clear understanding of what makes wrestling so great.
It’s always been about the big characters, the inventive storylines, and the unpredictable twists and turns, especially during the company’s late ‘90s Attitude Era, when Vince McMahon took sports entertainment to its very limits and beyond.
When it worked, it worked brilliantly. You only have to look at the legacy of stars like Mankind, Stone Cold, and The Rock to name but a few.
However, it didn’t always work, and when things went bad, they went really bad. So bad, in fact, that McMahon and most wrestling fans would probably rather erase any trace them from history altogether.
With that said, here are the 17 Crazy Storylines That WWE Wishes Wrestling Fans Would Forget.
Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio have a custody battle
Custody battles are rarely a source of amusement, even if they end up being resolved in ladder matches, but no one told WWE that.
In 2005, the late Eddie Guerrero started up a feud with Rey Mysterio that saw him reveal he was the father of Rey’s son Dominick.
According to the storyline, Eddie had given up the baby to Rey and his wife Angie, as they were having trouble conceiving, but now he wanted his son back.
Custody papers were drawn up with a fake lawyer before the two wrestlers duked it out at SummerSlam for the boy. Rey won out in the end, but the entire debacle left a sour taste in the mouth, especially as Mysterio’s actual son Dominick was used in the storyline.
Vince McMahon fakes his own passing
Vince McMahon hasn’t made many mistakes when it comes to WWE, but in June 2007 he orchestrated arguably his biggest blunder: "Mr. McMahon Appreciation Night."
It was supposed to be a special Monday Night Raw where wrestlers celebrated all things Vinny Mac. They did the opposite, of course, but the controversy came later.
As a dejected McMahon got into his limo to leave at the end of the night, something bizarre happened: the car exploded.
Did McMahon pass away? Several news outlets reported so, including WWE.com, while tributes were paid.
In reality, it was part of a storyline that seemingly ignored the fact a lot of wrestlers had been passing away in real life.
The timing could not have been worse: a few weeks later, Chris Benoit passed away in dark circumstances. The McMahon storyline was sensibly scrapped.
Big Boss Man hangs out in a cell
The late Ray Traylor, aka Big Boss Man, was never one to shy away from controversy in or out of the ring. It was an approach that could pay dividends but occasionally landed him in hot water.
The bizarre stunt that saw him gate-crash the (fake) funeral of The Big Show’s father before stealing his casket, for instance, is looked back on rather fondly.
However, the moment where the Undertaker celebrated victory over Boss Man at WrestleMania XV in a Hell in a Cell match by hanging his opponent from the roof of the cage is not.
Boss Man may have been using a special harness to create the illusion, but it was a little too close to the bone for anyone who had ever dealt with the passing of a loved one.
Mae Young and Mark Henry's hand
In 2000, WWE introduced one of the more bizarre storylines in the history of the organisation. It saw Olympic weight lifter Mark Henry enter into a romantic relationship with the late, great Mae Young, who was 77-years-old at the time.
The storyline saw Young return to the limelight after decades in the background and featured several rather risqué backstage encounters between the pair.
Things were then taken up a notch when Young announced she was pregnant with Henry's child.
Several tense months followed before Young finally gave birth to… a hand. Just a hand-- nothing else.
It was, perhaps, the perfect way to end an odd and, at times, hugely uncomfortable angle, though most wrestling fans probably look back on the ordeal and grimace.
Lita loses her child
In Spring 2007, WWE embarked on one of its worst storylines yet. It started as a tale of unrequited love, with the Big Red Machine, Kane, taking a shine to fellow wrestler Lita, only to find his advances rebuffed.
However, things took a disturbing turn when it was revealed that Lita -- who was being harassed by Kane – was pregnant and that the conception was not consensual.
This led to a Death Do Us Part match between Kane and her boyfriend Matt Hardy, with the winner marrying Lita.
Kane won and the pair wed ,but there was one final twist when an in-the-ring tumble saw Lita lose her child.
To be clear: none of this was real. It was just in very, very bad taste.
Brian Pillman pulls out a gun
The late Brian Pillman and Steve Austin made their name as WCW tag team "The Hollywood Blonds" prior to their switch to rivals WWE.
However, while Austin soon established a himself as "Stone Cold," Pillman took a different path-- a crazy path.
Adopting the persona of the "Loose Canon," he began carving out a reputation for unpredictable behaviour. The pinnacle came during a memorable feud with Austin that spilled over into Pillman’s Cincinnati home.
There, in November 1996, a controversial Cops-style filmed sequence saw Austin break into Pillman’s house to confront his rival.
In the sweary chaos that followed, Pillman pulled out a real gun and fired. Raw immediately cut to commercials, leaving fans wondering if Austin had been hit.
He wasn’t, but the incident has lived on in infamy for nearly getting the show pulled from the air.
Muhammad Hassan
WWE had bold plans for rising star Marc Julian Copani. The Syracuse-born Italian American was controversially introduced as Muhammad Hassan, an Arab-American wrestler seeking relief from the prejudice created by the 9/11 attacks-- or at least that was supposed to be the idea.
In reality, Hassan’s behaviour and insistence on praying to Allah offended a lot of Muslims.
Matters were then made a million times worse when Hassan led a group of masked attackers on an assault of The Undertaker on SmackDown.
The storyline could not have come at a worse time, just three days after London had been bombed. It led to television network UPN pressuring WWE to remove Hassan’s character from the show.
WWE relented, and the Muhammad Hassan gimmick was, thankfully, no more.
Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo pretend to be romantically involved
WWE appeared to be bringing wrestling kicking and screaming into the 21st century when it started collaborating with GLAAD on a story involving gay wrestlers-- or at least, that was how it appeared at first.
It all started when Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo teamed up to wrestle as WW’s first gay couple. It was done in a very over-the-top style of course and opponents regularly recoiled in horror when either Billy or Chuck tried to touch them, but it was still seen as progress.
Even the fact that their manager Rico came across as a gay deviant was ignored when Chuck proposed to Billy during an episode of Smackdown.
A week later, they staged their wedding in the ring only for the pair to suddenly disavow their relationship and orientation. It’s fair to say that GLAAD was not happy.
Sergeant Slaughter is an Iraqi sympathiser
In 1990, WWE legend Sergeant Slaughter wrote a letter to Vince McMahon. He had just watched WrestleMania VI and wanted back in at WWE.
McMahon told Slaughter that he could come back, but only if he agreed to play a heel with a new gimmick: he would be an Iraqi Sympathiser.
Coming during the First Gulf War, the angle saw Slaughter take to the ring to pledge allegiance to President Saddam Hussein while also decrying America.
He became the most hated man in wrestling, with things escalating to dangerous levels after he beat the Ultimate Warrior to win the WWE Championship at the 1991 Royal Rumble.
In the wake of the result, a deranged fan aimed threats at both Slaughter and Vince McMahon. Sarge ended up being assigned his own security team and wore a bulletproof vest.
Brian Pillman wins Marlena
The late Brian Pillman as a magnet for controversy during his time in the WWE. Having already garnered controversy for pulling a gun on Stone Cold Steve Austin, Pillman found a way to up the stakes at Ground Zero: In Your House in September 1997.
Fighting under his "Loose Cannon" gimmick, Pillman faced off against Goldust in an Indecent Proposal match. If Goldust won, Pillman would quit WWE, but if the Loose Cannon won, he would take Goldust’s girlfriend Marlena (Terri Runnels) for 30 days.
The unthinkable happened – Pillman triumphed. A series of provocative appearances followed, with Marlena portrayed as the victim of physical and mental abuse, which many fans thought was a step too far.
The storyline ended a month later when Pillman tragically passed away of a heart attack.
Heidenreich assaults Michael Cole
Commentator and occasional wrestler Michael Cole has been put through the wringer by WWE over the years, but things sunk to a new low back in 2004, during an encounter with Jon Heidenreich.
Heidenreich was trying out a new gimmick at the time, wrestling under a psychopath persona. He would run in during random matches, recite hateful poetry in the ring, and even attack fans.
On this occasion, he did something more extreme, though: he dragged Cole into an arena restroom and assaulted him.
Heidenreich claimed during an interview in 2008 that the skit was McMahon’s idea and that when it was pitched to him, he envisioned it being something akin the that infamous scene from Pulp Fiction.
Quentin Tarantino-style drama really had no place in wrestling, though.
Kurt Angle assaults Booker T’s wife
In 2005, Kurt Angle’s WWE career took a seriously dark turn during a rivalry with Booker T that the company simply couldn’t get away with today.
For some bizarre reason, the powers that be decided to have Angle start harassing and stalking Booker T’s wife Sharmell, claiming that she enjoyed it.
Angle even featured in a promo where he told fans he wanted to sleep with Sharmell, and that she had allegedly been intimate with him.
In the run-up to a showdown at the Judgement Night Pay Per View, he stalked Sharmell and regularly assaulted Booker T in his presence.
The plotline's assault element has since been widely condemned by most fans. Given how it the storyline turned out, it's no surprise why this situation raised a lot of eyebrows.
CM Punk dumps outs Paul Bearer’s ashes
WWE has never been afraid of blurring the lines between fiction and reality, but it hasn’t always worked out for the best. In fact, it has rarely worked out for the best.
For example, it didn't work out for the best when they decided to incorporate the passing of legendary manager and WWE fan favourite Paul Bearer into a storyline involving CM Punk and Bearer’s long-time charge, The Undertaker.
Bearer had only passed two weeks prior to the storyline, following a sudden heart attack at the age of 58. However, the writers at WWE felt it was perfectly acceptable to have CM Punk dump out Bearer’s "ashes" all over Mark Calloway’s head.
They weren’t Bearer’s ashes, of course, but the incident wasn’t well received by fans.
In fact, Bearer’s real-life son was not pleased with it at all, which isn’t a massive surprise.
Eugene
For whatever reason, WWE had a habit of incorporating serious, real-life issues into the cartoonish world wrestling with disastrous results.
That was certainly the case in 2004, when the company introduced Eugene: the first handicapped wrestler. Played by Nick Dinsmore, Eugene was introduced as a secret relative of Eric Bischoff who had a wisely unspecified learning difficulty.
What made it worse was that Bischoff was seemingly ashamed of Eugene and his attempts to make it in the industry, which didn’t send a great message. Neither did the fact that Eugene’s wrestling s amounted to little more than copying the moves of his heroes like The Rock at a time when the organisation was urging kids "don't try this at home."
Miraculously, Eugene stuck around for three years until he Dinsmore failed a substance test.
Triple H's time with the deceased
Ask Triple H about Katie Vick and the chances are he will go very quiet. It all dates back to an incident in 2002 in the run-up to a No Mercy showdown between Triple H and Kane.
It was a big match-up, with both the Intercontinental Championship and World Heavyweight Titles on the line, so something special was needed in the build-up.
Fortunately, The Game had just the thing. In a strange turn of events, Triple H claimed to have obtained footage of Kane sleeping with the body of a woman called Katie Vick who had passed away in a car crash.
WWE then broadcast footage of The Game, disguised as Kane, pretending to sleep with a mannequin in a funeral parlour casket.
It didn’t go down well with anyone and was unsurprisingly ditched before the match.
Hawk tries to take his own life
There was a real buzz around WWE when tag team duo the Road Warriors appeared in 1997. Things had changed for the Road Warriors and WWE, though.
By then, the WWE was more adult-orientated while one half of the duo, Hawk, was battling addiction. When WWE set about creating a storyline incorporated Hawk’s issues, but both he and partner Animal protested.
However, the WWE wouldn’t relent, forcing Hawk into a series of matches where he pretended to be under the influence. Things then escalated when Hawk wanted to claim his own life, climbing up the Titantron during a bleak episode of Monday Night Raw and eventually falling much to the distress of watching fans.
It was all a little too close to home and the Road Warriors quit soon after. Hawk passed away from a heart attack in 2003.
Big Boss Man feeds Al Snow a special meal
Big Boss Man went all William Shakespeare during a feud with Al Snowback in 1999, taking a page directly out of the play Titus Andronicus. This was more tragedy than comedy, though.
It all centred around Snow’s prized pet Chihuahua, Pepper, who Boss Man dog-napped during an episode of Smackdown.
Snow was told to come and meet Boss Man at a hotel in Boston if he wanted his dog back.
When he got there, however, Snow found no dog but only a special meal prepared by Boss Man that he was told to eat.
Clearly perturbed, Snow nevertheless chowed down on the grub only to then learn the grim truth: he had just eaten Pepper. Rest assured, no animals were harmed in the making of the segment-- just a few reputations.
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Can you think of any other WWE storylines that the company wants us to forget? Sound off in the comments!