Wrestling's Scummiest Moment Ever?

[EricR]

Anytime any wrestler has a well known very public drinking/drug problem, it becomes part of their storyline and a promotional tool. That sickens me. Jake Roberts, Hawk, Scott Hall, etc.

 

 

 

Drunk Hawk was legit my 12 year old sister's favorite wrestler for two weeks.

[Lust Hogan]

HHH - Booker T racism angle.

 

Sgt. Slaughter turns his back on America during the Gulf War.

[BigBadMick]

Trish barking like a dog etc on the build to Wrestlemania 17.

[fxnj]

I'd go with TNA, while it was still the solid candidate for #2 worldwide, paying its performers peanuts and generally not giving a fuck about their well being as the ultimate example of wrestling scum. On-air example would be them running a concussion angle with Mr. Anderson to make it look like they cared, while at the same time they were pressuring Daphney backstage to do dangerous stunts and refusing to pay the bill when they injured her. I'd say that's much worse than WWE or an old territory running some angle SJW's don't like.

[Loss]

 

Austin giving a stunner to Stacy Keibler for the "crime" of not wanting to drink beer. Bear in mind that both Austin and Stacy were babyfaces at this time, and it led to nothing, so not only scummy, but pointless. The 2002 Molly Holly angle comes to mind as well, shaming her for both being a Virgin and having a large butt. Im still trying to figure out why she even allowed them to do that angle.

 

You're leaving out the worst part of this. This was after Austin got in trouble for domestic abuse with Debra.

 

 

It was also the same day the court order forbidding Austin from drinking alcohol was lifted. Everything was wrong with that.

[Loss]

Hey everyone, remember that time they booked HHH vs Jim Ross on RAW so HHH could rough him up (and actually permanently injure his eye) as a receipt for lowballing him on a pay-per-view payoff a few years earlier? The story was that Ross was specifically told to stay low on the payoff and not budge with HHH, and then when HHH went to Vince, Vince said, "Oh, I can't believe he did this. We'll take care of it."

[Loss]

Hey everyone, remember that time management knew that Bob Orton had hepatitis and kept it private, then he bled all over Undertaker?

[Loss]

Hey everyone, remember when they did Austin/Benoit on Raw from Calgary with Stu Hart at ringside and re-enacted the Montreal screwjob while Bruce Hart picked up his dad's hand and forced him to wave at the camera?

[supremebve]

This has the potential to be the longest thread ever. Trying to find the scummiest moment in wrestling is like trying to find the smelliest moment in bathrooms. We'll never run out of examples.

 

Didn't Brock Lesnar throw a one-legged man down a flight of stairs? I hate to admit this, but that is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. Zach Gowen's short run was incredibly fun.

[Laz]

The Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie/Al Wilson crap.

 

XPW. No matter what people may say about Fritz, racism used to hype an angle, or anything involving Vince McMahon, I will always say XPW.

 

Addendum to XPW: the rumor that Rob Black hired some guys to castrate Messiah after he left the company for CZW/banged his porn star wife/left without saying goodbye.

[Memphis Mark]

Anything involved Vince McMahon . You can choose from the Owen Hart death, him mocking God on TV , the Kiss my ass Club , Drugging Linda , Having an affair with Trish , making Trish get down on her knees and bark like a dog , bragging about his own semen , kidnapping his own daughter , making a joke out of Lawler's heart attack , and much , much more. Vince is the biggest scumbag in Wrestling history and one one the top scumbags of all time. He is your winner. I love wrestling but I will not give that monster one dime.if anything in poor taste happen in the WWF , McMahon is behind it all.

[Mad Dog]

Okay, I have to defend Vince. Yes, he is a scumbag but he's also paid out of his own pocket to send countless guys to rehab over the years. That's more than a lot of promoters have ever done.

[thebrainfollower]

Vince has very very low taste if any and believes his audience to have even lower taste than he does. That Trish moment made me turn my TV off in disgust, but it also made me admire her for having the courage to do something like that, work through it and do what she did for the next 5 years I guess. If had been her I would have said no way to doing that, and taken my chances in court. She's got more courage than I do.

 

I feel the biggest problem was the payoff. One slap is all she got as payback. She and Stephanie fought on Raw the next night but the match ended with Regal interfering because heaven forbid the Almighty Steph do a job. Then the feud was dropped and never mentioned again. Meltzer reported the reason being the dog segment got so much heat they had to drop the story altogether. Yup 6 weeks later at just the time Stephanie would get hers they "had" to drop the angle.

 

Scummiest thing I ever saw. Katie Vick was close. Let's not forget Vince wanted an angle where he impregnated Stephanie as well and she shot that down (confirmed BY HER on a WWE DVD)

[Laz]

Trish wouldn't have been able to take it to court. "Actress refuses to do scene" isn't worth litigation without illegal coercion involved.

[fakeplastictrees]

The WWF sex scandals of the early 90's it really up there in terms of WWE's scummy behind-the-scenes history. WWE in general just comes off as a 'let's surpress this' type of corporation which is why the racism, sexism, etc. has flourished for so many years...

 

more later.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Katie Vick would only be scummy if there really was a Katie Vick who died in a car wreck. People are confusing stupid storylines with actual scummy things. Fritz selling fake autographed pictures of his dead kids is scummy. Trish barking like a dog is just silly.

[MJH]

Bit of a Devil's Advocate but... at the end of the day, Fritz was exploiting the deaths of his own sons, not someone else's.

[jushin muta liger]

Jim Neidhart dressing up as a Klansmen and beating up Virgil. No matter if you like or dislike Virgil, any person who is flicking the channel would automatically think a KKK member is beating up a black man in a wrestling ring.

[MJH]

Also, I agree with JS that a lot of these things are more tasteless than what I'd consider "scummy", and the problem, as thebrainfollower mentioned re: Trish/payback, isn't necessarily the subject matter itself (we can all name great TV shows, films, etc. which deal - graphically - with contentious subject matter) but rather how it was handled. There's nothing innately wrong with doing an angle based around, say, racism, but you have to treat it as an adult, which wrestling often seems incapable of doing.

[Infinit]

Jim Neidhart dressing up as a Klansmen and beating up Virgil. No matter if you like or dislike Virgil, any person who is flicking the channel would automatically think a KKK member is beating up a black man in a wrestling ring.

When and where did this happen?

[Laz]

Katie Vick would only be scummy if there really was a Katie Vick who died in a car wreck. People are confusing stupid storylines with actual scummy things. Fritz selling fake autographed pictures of his dead kids is scummy. Trish barking like a dog is just silly.

Aye to this. There's tasteless angles and then there's scummy behavior. The WWF sex scandals? Scummy. A heel being a complete prick before his comeuppance? Not really.

[The Man in Blak]

Katie Vick would only be scummy if there really was a Katie Vick who died in a car wreck. People are confusing stupid storylines with actual scummy things. Fritz selling fake autographed pictures of his dead kids is scummy. Trish barking like a dog is just silly.

 

Also, I agree with JS that a lot of these things are more tasteless than what I'd consider "scummy", and the problem, as thebrainfollower mentioned re: Trish/payback, isn't necessarily the subject matter itself (we can all name great TV shows, films, etc. which deal - graphically - with contentious subject matter) but rather how it was handled. There's nothing innately wrong with doing an angle based around, say, racism, but you have to treat it as an adult, which wrestling often seems incapable of doing.

 

I guess I have a broader definition of scummy. Handling contentious subject matter in a utterly tasteless way -- whether it's real or "fake", whether it's the death of a performer or "taboo" subjects like necrophilia -- qualifies for me.

 

Take the (real? fake?) Neidhart/Virgil/KKK attack mentioned upthread -- would that be any less despicable if Neidhart was just playing the role of a Klansman vs. actually being in the Klan?

[flyonthewall2983]

Maybe you could do two shows, one about the most scummiest thing not involving Vince, and another psycho-analyzing Vince.

[jushin muta liger]

 

Jim Neidhart dressing up as a Klansmen and beating up Virgil. No matter if you like or dislike Virgil, any person who is flicking the channel would automatically think a KKK member is beating up a black man in a wrestling ring.

When and where did this happen?

This happened in 1995 on one of those local indy Feds in the 90s that got TV. The historians on the board would much more than I would about it. I've heard about in the past but last year was the first time I saw it.

 

http://youtu.be/kyXn24iAVYY

[MikeCampbell]

Something that just came to mind. When the heart attack angle does come up, you should at least mention the fact that Kevin has adamantly denied (for years now) that they never planned for the angle to go that way. They were just supposed to attack Fritz to add more heat to the latest redux of Freebirds/Von Erichs. But, when Fritz collapsed, the fans just jumped to that conclusion and it blew up (again, according to Kevin)