By Scott Bowden
October 9, 2003
Wrecking the business:
Scott Bowden believes the WWE’s homicidal angles will kill only one thing: the company itself
After one of World Wrestling Entertainment’s babyfaces apparently murdered one of the company’s heels before a TV audience on this week’s RAW, I was left wondering what’s next. Will Shane McMahon eventually brandish a shotgun and fire bullets into the black heart of Kane, the baddest boogeyman on the planet? Don’t put it past them.
In the last few years, we’ve been subjected to countless attempted murders involving WWE performers. Off the top of my head, I can recall Steve Austin being run over by an unknown assailant, and The Rock, strapped in an ambulance, getting creamed by a semi-truck driven by the NWO’s Hollywood Hogan. More recently, we’ve had announcer Jim Ross burned alive by Kane, who himself was later tossed into a fiery pit by Shane. With the exception of Austin, who had to take time off for neck surgery, all escaped with only a few scratches, if that.
These angles, all of which reek of desperation, don’t work for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the company long ago stopped taking itself — not to mention its audience — seriously. As a result, WWE is nothing more than a sad parody of itself. The show reminds me of a ridiculously violent version of a TV wrestling program that Bart would be watching on an episode of THE SIMPSONS.
The only time the attempted-murder angle even remotely succeeded, of course, was in Memphis in 1992, when Eddie Gilbert ran over Jerry Lawler in the parking lot of the WMC-TV studios. Hell, even Eddie’s brother, Doug, who was in the passenger’s seat, thought Lawler was dead. A few fans were so shaken up they called the police, who quickly apprehended Gilbert. (A police station is located almost directly across from the TV studio.) Fearing that Gilbert would be charged, Lawler explained the angle to the officers, and to prove his point, hobbled in front of the camera to challenge Gilbert to a match two nights later. In other words, Lawler felt like he had to show the cops and the viewing audience that “Hey, it was all just a work. I’m OK!” (In that day, a great number of fans still believed in the business and the boys, too, for that matter … or at least they really wanted to.) As a result of Lawler’s challenge, the angle — controversial even by Memphis standards — increased the crowd by about 100 fans. Normally, Lawler would have taken at least a month off, and his return would have sparked attendance to near capacity.
Memphis had much better success when Rick Rude merely smashed Lawler’s windshield with a baseball bat. Fans buy an angle like that because they can relate to it. After all, you don’t fuck with a man’s automobile.
If you’re going to run such an angle, at least have the victim involved sell the damn thing. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way after Brian Christopher Lawler shattered a Coke bottle over my head. The bottle, which had been softened after an hour in an oven, erupted against my skull as Perry Saturn ran down to ringside to cover my colorless head and carry my prone Polo-wearing ass back to the dressing room. During a TV promo the following Saturday, they aired a clip of the footage before cutting back to me, as I vowed revenge. The Dream Machine (the late Troy Graham) was waiting for me. He pulled me aside and informed me that “ … 15 years ago, one of the boys would be kicking your ass right now for not selling that bottle shot. You’re a smart kid. Act like it.” I can only imagine what Troy’s reaction would be today’s product. Not to mention Marge Simpson’s.
And poor Glen Jacobs. After his Kane character took off, he must’ve thought those years of bad gimmicks were behind him. In recent weeks, Jim Ross, Shane and Linda McMahon have all been attacked by the unmasked Kane, who it seems more and more resembles the bald, crazed country bumpkin from FULL METAL JACKET.
The only thing worse than the Kane/Shane angle is the Vince/Steph feud on SMACKDOWN! Again, it’s not the first parent/offspring feud, but, in this case, nobody’s buying it. I mean, really, daddy’s little girl squaring off against daddy? No way. At least when Bill Dundee went after his son, Jamie, in Memphis in 1990, a lot of fans probably thought it was a shoot. Jamie acted the part of the hooligan son perfectly. Acted? Hell, he lived it, though, granted, that’s not anything necessarily to be proud of. But the Dundee story line made sense: Jamie accused Bill of being an absentee father, blaming his old man for how he turned out. Yeah, OK. I’ll buy that because it tracks, it makes sense. But on SMACKDOWN!, you really get the sense that this is the last possible scenario they can come up with involving the McMahons. (Hey, a guy’s gotta dream, right?) “We’ve done everything else except Steph vs. Vince … let’s do that!”
Man, oh, man, do I miss the days when merely cracking a chair over someone’s head drew riot-inducing heat. But since WWE obviously prefers the homicidal approach, can I offer this suggestion: Kill off the McMahon characters. All of ‘em. Just wipe ‘em out. Even give The Undertaker one last push and allow him to handle the burials. Anything. Just get rid of them.
Now I’d hate to see anything happen to the “real” McMahons (assuming there is such a thing), but I wouldn’t shed a tear if their characters were killed off. One by one. With each dying a slow, painful death. Otherwise, it’s the company itself that might follow that path.
