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10 Things WWE Wouldn't Run With...

As bad as Vince McMahon can be, it could be worse....

Case in point, per the Tropes,
Jeff' Hardys TNA run, and his career, reached their rock bottom at Victory Road 2011. Hardy showed up at the Impact Zone at usual call-time of 11 AM. He was supposed to plan out his match with Sting and a road agent, but did not (and would not) show up until shortly before the match. Then-producer Bruce Prichard claimed to have seen two people carry Jeff into the gorilla position, "Weekend at Bernie's-style."

The match itself was a black comedy of errors. Jeff missed his entrance cue by forty seconds, and when he finally came out, he was clearly intoxicated, made all the more obvious by his strange mugs to the camera during the ring introductions. Referee Brian Hebner signaled Hardy was in no condition to wrestle. According to Bischoff in his podcast, nobody else with power was at gorilla position — so he called an audible and killed time with a promo, during which he told Sting and Hardy to wrap up the match as soon as possible.

The match lasted about ninety seconds. The first minute consisted of Hardy teasing throwing his shirt at the crowd and dropping it at ringside; the final thirty seconds were Sting legitimately dragging Hardy by his hair into a Scorpion Death Drop and forcibly pinning him. Hardy struggled so hard to kick out of that pin, he left scratch marks on Sting's neck. Jeff looked completely disoriented as the match ended, and TNA killed time with a recap of the night that ran for longer than the main event. The crowd angrily chanted "this is bullshit" and Sting memetically agreed loud enough for the viewing audience to hear.

This was the last straw for TNA, who suspended Hardy indefinitely and buried him on-air — but did not fire him, as he was one of their top merch sellers. The fallout of Sting vs. Hardy was heard far and wide: Botchamania shone a big spotlight on it by adding a clip of the leering Jeff in their intro, and it was inducted into WrestleCrap. Impact was always a little wacky (Jarrett's reign of terror, his bizarre gold investment scams, and trying to sell shards of the table Dixie Carter went through for $200 apiece), but this was when everyone realized they were plain old carnies.
 
Yeah, I remember that incident very well. How they could let that happen is beyond me. Granted, Scott Hall showed up to several indie events completely out of it, so...I guess it makes sense.
 
Yeah, I remember that incident very well. How they could let that happen is beyond me.
Speaking of which....
 
So many idiotic things they've done down the years
Could be worse....

For instance,
(1) Ready to Rumble. To promote the movie, WCW allowed actor David Arquette to win the WCW Title, keep it for a good amount of time, have him compete in a triple cage match at Slamboree 2000 similar to the one in the movie, then turn heel during said match (with the overzealous Tony Schiavone calling it "the ultimate swerve!!").

(2) The Great American Bash '91, which had the entire Baltimore audience switching back and forth between two reactions: sitting on their hands, and chanting "WE WANT FLAIR!" (including during the main event). They were protesting Flair's firing just days earlier. Note that kayfabe was far from dead at the time, and Flair was the biggest heel in the company. Flair, meanwhile, would join the WWF, taking the NWA World Heavyweight Championship with him (since he wasn't paid back the $25,000 deposit he put down on the belt when he received it for the first time). Flair kept calling himself the "Real World's Heavyweight Champion" to antagonize then-champ Hulk Hogan...but everyone knew the Take That! was really meant for Jim Herd, who was running WCW at the time. As a result, the main event featured Barry Windham and Lex Luger in a steel cage, fighting for Dusty Rhodes' old Pacific Wrestling Federation belt with a plate bolted over that read "WCW WORLD CHAMPION", since the new belt wasn't finished yet. It was capped off with the first of many unnecessary heel turns by Luger.

(3) The whole clusterfuck that was WCW advertising "a giant in each ring", which tied into another clusterfuck known as The Yeti (aka "THE YETAY!"). The idea behind having "a giant in each ring" was to make sure Hogan had to fight a giant no matter which ring he was in. The end result was Hogan being billed as one of the giants, despite being the shortest of The Outsiders.

(4) Harlem Heat's original gimmick: "The Posse". Booker T and Stevie Ray, as "Kole" and "Kane" respectively, wore prison outfits and were carried in chains by Southern Gentleman Col. Robert Parker, who won their services in a card game. The initial concept only lasted a single house show, where the audience became outraged by the obvious Unfortunate Implications: they were meant to portray convicts, but looked more like slaves. The team did perform on-screen as Kole and Kane for close to a year, but without the prison motifs or Parker (who would later go on to manage them again alongside Sherri Martel). Curiously enough, pictures of Booker and Stevie wearing the prison suits managed to sneak into the poster◊ for Fall Brawl 1993.

(5) For a very long time, all the way up to his death, Scott Hall was known for his crippling alcoholism, which often left him nearly or outright unable to perform. He was apparently getting deep into his addiction during his WCW run, which the company tastefully turned into an on-screen angle in which Hall would slur his words during promos, juke and stumble around, strange "acting" from other wrestlers (especially his long-time friend Kevin Nash), and a segment where Hall vomited all over Eric Bischoff. It got so bad, Hall's ex-wife Dana begged the company to stop and give him help in an open letter sent to a WCW fansite.
 

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