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WWE 2006 – A Year of Shame: |
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Tim White – Attempted Suicide: Never has one WWE angle ever fit more Hall of Shame criteria than this one. At Judgment Day 2002, Tim White was injured while refereeing a Hell in a Cell match between Triple H & Chris Jericho. All along, WWE has tried to stress that the Cell changes the lives of everyone involved in them. When Tim White took a bump off the ring into the side of the cage, he injured his shoulder and was never able to return to his referee duties. At Armageddon 2005, they were pushing the fact that the Cell changes lives, and tracked down Tim White as bar he owns. Live on PPV, Tim White grabbed a shotgun and committed (simulated) suicide. We later found out he was alive and commited suicide several additional times on WWE.com — someone please explain how this helps draw viewers? |
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Shelton Banjamin’s Mama: Shelton Benjamin fell into a slump and he was in the middle of depressing losing streak. One night after a match, Shelton Benjamin’s Mama showed up to whip Shelton into shape! We didn’t even get to know what her name was, as she was constantly refered to as “Shelton Benjamin’s Mama.” She began helping her son win matches without him knowing, thus bringing Shelton back to his winning ways. But now he was a heel and everyone started calling him a Mamas Boy. A few months later Shelton Benjamin’s Mama suffered a heart attack at ringside when the Big Show yelled “Don’t touch me!” at her during a match! Maybe Mrs. Benjamin and Al Wilson will meet in heaven. |
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Live Sex Celebration: The year 2006 started with a bang. One of the most highly praised shocking moments in recent WWE history occured when Edge cashed in his “Money in the Bank” priviledge after John Cena retained the WWE title in the Elimination Chamber. Edge consequently captured the WWE title in a truly electric moment. What did WWE do to follow up this triumph? With something stupid, of course! Edge promised to celebrate by have SEX with Lita the following night LIVE in the ring on RAW. The moment arrived, and Edge and Lita were in bed in the middle of the ring supposedly “doing it” until Ric Flair thankfully interrupted. The highlight of the night came when Lita’s breast was exposed on TV (censored in USA & CANADA but shown in the UK). Guess what, it scored the highest rating in years! |
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The Spirit Squad: So one day back in January the WWE creative team was sitting around their creative table brainstorming on new characters for the fresh young talent being groomed in Ohio Valley Wrestling. Suddenly one nervous hand went up and Mrs. Stephanie McMahon-Levesque-H acknowledged his request to speak. Well Mrs. H, I think we should make five characters that are the complete opposite of what appeals to our demographic. I can’t imagine any wrestling fan would respect a male cheerleader, and let’s make them sorta gay too. “Perfect!” shouted daddy’s little girl… as she threw five darts at the wall covered with developmental talent photographs. Johnny Ace…. call up Ken Doane, Johnny Jeter, Mike Mondo, Nick Nemeth and Nick Mitchell! What? You say they are already in the middle of their own well-written storylines at OVW? WHO CARES!! What Stephanie wants…. STEPHANIE GETS!!!! |
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The Boogeyman: The WWE does not tolorate liars. That’s what Johnny Ace told Marty Wright during Tough Enough try-outs when he was caught lying about his age, claiming to be 30 when he was really 40. The judges made an example out of him, sending him packing, despite being the only one at the session who had a pre-developed character in mind. A few months later, WWE signed him to a contract anyway. Unfortunately someone forgot to give him some actual wrestling training before giving him the character of “The Boogeyman” and bringing him up to the main roster almost immediately. He was put into storylines with some of the top guys on SmackDown!, such as JBL and Booker T. He was clumbsy and didn’t know a wrist-lock from a wrist watch. In his defense, he really did throw himself into the character and he was willing to do anything. “Anything” included eating handfuls of live worms in front of thousands of cringing fans. |
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The Road Warrior: Okay, so the WWE produced a DVD about the legendary team known as The Road Warriors, Hawk and Animal. Since only one half of the combination was still alive, they needed to find a way to promote the darn thing, so they signed Animal to a contract (Animal just happens to be the brother of Talent Relations co-ordinator Johnny Ace). Animal reformed the Legion of Doom with a big tough rookie named John Heidenreich. Fair enough, it was a fitting tribute to Hawk at first, but then it went on for months and they even won the WWE Tag Team titles together. When they lost the titles, they broke up and Animal totally abandoned his gimmick and went to a gay biker store to develop a new character for himself. He began calling himself “The Road Warrior” and the picture to the left speaks for itself. |
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Pirate Paul Burchill: WWE has a habit of taking nice young talent and destroying their credibility with one big mistake. Paul Burchill is young, athletic, charismatic and full of potential, which made it so unfortunate that he was given a stupid Pirate gimmick. They could have saved this storyline if they followed through with the proposed storyline of bringing in Shelly Martinez to be his Pirate’s Wench. |
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The Lord of Sports-Entertainment: This storyline is just so over-the-top ridiculous that I feel stupid just writing about it. I feel even more cursed that I had to endure it on my Television every Monday night. It all started when Shawn Michaels stuck up for Bret Hart and started his feud with Vince McMahon. McMahon had to incorporate Michaels’ faith into the storyline so every week the religious overtones got thrown into the mix. This resulted in a match between Vince & Shane McMahon taking on Shawn Michaels and……… yup, GOD! From there Vince continued with the religious stuff, which was not only terribly offensive but extremely unentertaining from a fans perspective. It often had nothing to with wrestling whatsoever, except to try to get his desperate company a little mainstream exposure. It didn’t work. |
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Palmer QUITs (Reason: JBL): Massachusetts-based wrestler Brian Black was a nice young talent when he signed a coveted WWE developmental contract back in March of 2005. He had trained hard for five years with dreams of becoming a WWE wrestler and now he had his chance. After months of sitting at home, Brian debuted as Palmer Canon on SmackDown! wearing a suit, representing the “Network” in a non-wrestling role. In fact he wasn’t even portrayed as a wrestler, just a corporate penny pincher. The only time he saw action was when he wrestled in Deep South Wrestling, and even there he was acting as a SD! Talent Scout. It must have been very frustrating, so when he became the victim of locker room bully JBL on a tour of Europe he literally grabbed his bags and walked out on his supposed “dream job.” Yes, Brian Black quit the sports entertainment business to return to the wrestling business. |
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Wasting Charlie Haas: Back in July of 2005, Charlie Haas and Jackie Gayda had recently gotten married when they received their extra special wedding present from their generous employer, World Wrestling Entertainment. The gift, an unceremoneous release from their contracts. Both Charlie Haas and Jackie Gayda sent feelers to TNA where they would have no doubt received a great push into the World title picture. Charlie Haas opted to stay on the independent circuit and wait for WWE to call like a desperate monkey. Sure enough, Charlie Haas was resigned to the WWE in January of 2006 and made his return to RAW on April 17, 2006. I’m sure Charlie had hopes for a bigger push, and despite having an obvious storyline with Shelton Benjamin, he found himself wasting away week after week doing absolutely nothing, spending most of his time on Sunday Night Heat. After an unfortunate pre-match accident which inadvertantly injured ring announcer Lilian Garcia. Charlie was turned heel and put in a tag team with Viscera. |
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ECW on Sci-Fi (They forgot the ECW): When WWE decided to produce the first ECW One Night Stand, wrestling fans accross the world were “extremely” excited with the final product that was presented on Pay Per View. Deep down inside, we knew that it was the one and only time ECW would truly be represented in its original form. The second installment of ECW One Night Stand was a lot less inspiring, and was the catalyst for the ressurection of ECW via a 1-hour television show on the Sci-Fi network. When the show debuted, fans were horrified by the reality that original ECW wrestlers would be there to put over some of WWE’s creations. New stars were being created at the expense of ECW’s cult reputation; Such as C.M. Punk, Kevin Thorn, Test, Mike Knox, and an exhibitionist named Kelly Kelly. |
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Kelly Kelly = Shame Shame: Barbie Blank was discovered when Vice President of WWE Talent Relations Johnny Ace was leafing through a Venus Swimwear catalogue and somehow concluded that she would be a good addition to the WWE. This is how WWE scouts for talent these days, never mind having years of training and experience paying your dues on the independent circuit, you just gotta be a swimsuit model. So when Johnny Ace got off the crapper he immediately called up Barbie Blanks and offered her a job with WWE as an exhibitionist on their new ECW show on Sci-Fi. WWE actually thought the “Extreme” in ECW actually meant slutty girls stripping and teasing fans. That never happened in ECW — okay maybe once. Anyway Kelly showed up on the very first ECW show and performed her strip tease. She must have been really nervous because she screwed everything up and had trouble getting her own bra off. Fans absolutely hated Kelly, and hated the gimmick even more. The strip teases continued each week until it turned into one big storyline to get Mike Knox over as a heel by interrupting just before the nudity.. |
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The Zombie – Promo of the Year: Part of the arrangement that WWE made with the Sci-Fi Network was for WWE to create several Science Fiction oriented characters on the show. Enter The Zombie, played by independent wrestler Tim Arson, who walked to the ring with his arms outstretched and grabbed the microphone from ring announcer Justin Roberts and moaned loudly into the microphone for 45 seconds. Hey it might have been bad, but it was better than half the promos in WWE! Suddenly, The Sandman (one of the only ECW originals allowed to “get over”) showed up swinging a cane and destroyed the Zombie, a subtle message to the Sci-Fi network on what they thought of their Sci-Fi characters. The following week the scenario was repeated, this time with Macho Libre, a character created to spoof the movie “Nacho Libra” and “Macho Man Randy Savage“. One week later, Sandman got to cane a Male stripper into oblibion. Seven days later it was a priest. With this and Kelly’s expose, ECW began feeling like a broken record. |
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The Extreme Giant: Eventually the whole ECW project turned into one big attempt to get one wrestler over, The Big Show. He defeated Rob Van Dam (who was suspended for getting busted with marijuana) for the ECW World title and suddenly the show began revolving around him with storylines that had nothin to do with ECW. He kept challenging outside wrestlers from RAW and Smackdown! to come to ECW to challenge for the ECW World title. How was this supposed to help the ECW product? The Big Show had main event matches on Sci-Fi with Ric Flair, The Undertaker, Kane, and Batista. Then he started beating Sabu every week. The Big Show was quick to brag that he was the first person to ever win the WCW, WWE and ECW World Heavyweight titles — proving once and for all that titles in wrestling are worthless. |
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Live TV = No Khali: It could be said that The Great Khali is about two decades too late to be something big in professional wrestling. Back in the early 80s, Khali could have been one of the most famous names in wrestler. However, today’s industry will not allow such fame for someone with no talent. The Great Khali is an amazing physical specimin but that is where the positive traits end. Is is so untrustworthy as an in-ring performer that the WWE literally is zero faith in him to perform on live Television. That is why he ended up on the taped SmackDown! program, where his blunders can be heavily edited. There were some tense moments when he was allowed to wrestle on PPV, and once he was even pulled at the last minute because they were afraid he would botch the whole deal. Poor guy. |
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The Toughest Man To Ever Wear a Dress: Throughout wrestling history, there are several “angles” that have been stolen, re-used, or recycled over the years. Some of them are so bad you have to wonder how it keeps getting past the booking committee stages. Usually a wrestler loses a “Loser wears a dress” match and has to wear a dress in the ring, but in this case Big Vito just suddenly started wearing dresses. It was made abundantly clear that he wasn’t gay, he just liked wearing dresses! |
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Ambassador of Quebec — Tres Merde!: What did Sylvain Grenier do to deserve a series of such horrible gimmicks? First he started out in a tag team known as La Resistance (from France). Then he was an egotistical super model from Montreal. Now he is some sort of a tourist bureau agent encouraging tourists to visit Quebec — or as he calls it, “the Jewel of North America”. Equipt with such exquisite catch phrases so memorable that I can’t even remember any of them. I’m not offended as a Canadian, I’m offended as a wrestling fan! |
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Mama said… No, Lita said Knock you out!: (Cory Titler wrote:) This past week on RAW [August 14], Edge came out to cut down John Cena’s “The Champ is here!” slogan. After that, it went all downhill from there. This storyline involved Edge going in to John Cena’s house, cut everything down (like the title belts on the wall), and slaps John’s father! There is something called cops if you do that. The McMahons where probably laughing when they came up with this storyline. Editor’s Addition: RAW started with the news that John Cena was at home consoling his father, but he somehow made it back to the RAW venue by the end of the night to attack Edge and further their feud. |
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Watching Paint Dry: One would think if you put two of WWE’s best rising stars out on Television with a live microphone for a 15 minute that they would step up to the plate and deliver an entertaining segment. Unfortunately for Melina Perez & Johnny Nitro, the WWE creative team prevented this from becoming a reality. Coming off a very heated angle where Melina turned on her mentor, Mick Foley, by low-blowing him and firing him on behalf of the McMahon, this storyline fell flat quickly. Melina & Nitro stood behind a podium and read their script as instructed as everyone in the audience fell straight to sleep. In a rare moment of self-acceptance, WWE writers realized that the segment did not go very well (probably unjustly blaming it on Melina & Nitro) so the following week they had Jeff Hardy compare the segment to watching paint dry! |
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Disrespecting Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin: Just one day after beloved animal activist Steve Irwin was killed by a sting ray while filming a documentary, WWE writers didn’t think there would be any problem using the tragedy to get one of their failed heels a little much needed heat. Matt Striker was the unlucky test subject for this tasteless experiment. Striker, who professes himself to have a superior intellect (how ironic) stated that he would not be stupid enough to go swimming with deadly sting rays. It was really unnecessary and turned out to be a perfect example of why nobody respects wrestling any more. Hey, I have an idea… let’s bring back Outback Jack to defend the honor of the Crocodile Hunter! |
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Extreme Strip Poker: Embarassing. They kept coming back to this segment all throughout the show, even interrupting perfectly good wrestling matches to show these idiotic skits. It was a whole lot of bad acting, bad stripping, fake smiles, fake boobs, fake laughs, horrible jokes. Oh yeah and to make it worse, Balls Mahoney played the part of the horny card dealer accumulating diva clothing. It wasn’t even actual poker. I guess Divas are too dumb to learn the rules, all they did was play high card. Conversation included John Cena, “The Marine”, Batista, and Balls Mahoney’s crotch having a mind of its own. The only thing remotely entertaining about this was Joey Styles “keeping score” and Tazz making fun of him. It all ended with Candice and Maria argueing and stripped eachother naked (screen blurred) and catfighting.. |
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What Ever Happened to……. Victoria?: Victoria is a 2-time WWE Women’s Champion and perhaps the toughest female wrestler on the WWE roster. 2006 will be remembered as the year Victoria was saddled with the untalented duo of Torrie & Candice. Victoria had to stand in the enormous shadows of their fake breasts. Before the end of the year, however, Victoria would get some satisfaction, but only because Trish Stratus & Lita left the WWE and they needed a replacement. |
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The “T” and “A” Tournament of Death: The Women’s title was vacated when Trish left the WWE. It was immediately vacated and a Tournament was assembled. Unfortunately there were only two actual wrestlers left in contention, not including Victoria. So it ended up being Mickie James vs. Lita in the Finals but not before some terrible preliminary matches involving Maria, Candice, & Torrie. |
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The MVP — Most Valuable Punk: It seemed like the WWE was hyping the SmackDown! debut of Montel Vontavious Porter for months before he made his actual in-ring debut. He was a jive-talkin’ sharp-dressed player who looked like he had what it takes to be the next big WWE Super Star. I even went on my MySpace blog and proclaimed that when The MVP debuted, everyone would be very impressed with his talent. I’m convinced the WWE creative team switched gears just to make me look like a fool. When the MVP debuted on PPV, he morphed from a sharp dressed man with all the potential in the world into a ridiculously dressed loser with no talent. I don’t even know how to describe his ring gear, just look at the picture to the left, it’s hideous! Fans, go out and support your independent wrestling because many of the stars from your local promotions will see their best days on the independent circuit because if they ever make it to the WWE they’ll probably end up being the next MVP. |
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Big Dick…. Johnson!: What were they thinking? God bless WWE writer Chris DeJosephs, he probably thought of half of this years crop of Hall of Shame entries. So I guess his punishment was totally appropriate but definitely not necessary. He was forced go out on ECW television and strip almost naked and pour oil all over himself – I refuse to put a naked photo of Big Dick on OWW so you’re stuck with the DX jacket version but trust me it’s a pretty sight. It’s slightly more hideous than MVP’s ring outfit. It was meant to be a one time shot but it caused such an uproar that they brought him back four or five other times. I guess it’s a good business decision to make fans throw up their dinner so they will buy more food at the concession stands. |
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K-Fed joins the Fed: This one is just too bizarre. Failed rap artist Kevin Federline, famous mostly for being the guy who got to impregnate Britney Spears. That was the night they went to a magic show in Las Vegas and David Copperfield made Britney’s taste in men disappear. I think they actually had two babies together, what the hell? K-Fed, as he was dubbed, appeared on RAW and was an instant heel – but he got F-U’d by WWE Champion John Cena. In the meantime, Britney Spears came to her senses and filed for divorce. I just hope her babies look, act, and talk more like her and not him. K-Fed came back to RAW and challenged Cena to face him on the January 1st episode on RAW — ladies and gentleman we already have the first Hall of Shame entry for 2007! |