Hall of Shame – WWE 2007

WWE 2007 – A Year of Shame:

To follow up 2002 & 2003 & 2004 & 2005 & 2006 WWE Year of Shame, we will follow the year 2007 as it goes and add to the Shame as it happens.. The crap tends to come through and a quick pace so keep checking back for updates..

K-Fed joins the Fed: When we last left you in 2006, Kevin Federline was fresh off his divorce from Britney Spears, and training hard with Johnny Nitro for a scheduled match with WWE Champion John Cena. The match itself was everything it was expected to be and more – a complete and utter farce! K-Fed (who, for some reason, insisted that everyone call him Kevin Federline) actually pinned John Cena and committed manslaughter against the integrity of the WWE Championship. It was the first match of the show on January 1, but by the end of the night John Cena got a measure of revenge when he FU’d Kevin Federline in the middle of the ring!

The Donald vs. The Rosie: Desperate times call for desperate measures. One of the brains at the USA Network wanted Vince McMahon to include Donald Trump in a WWE storyline in an attempt to cross-promote WWE programming with Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice.” So the first brick was laid when Vince McMahon advertised a match LIVE on RAW between Donald Trump and his media nemesis Rosie O’Donnell. Anybody who believed that Trump or O’Donnell was going to show up on LIVE WWE television should have their head examined but it reality it was still false advertising. The match took place with actors (trained independent wrestlers) playing the part of “The Donald” and “Rosie,” and of course Rosie was made to look like an obese bafoon while Trump was the more distinquished winner of the match (which in itself was a farce). This led to the REAL Donald Trump showing up on RAW and challenging Vince McMahon a ‘Hair vs. Hair’ match at WrestleMania 23 with each man chosing a representative for the match.

Extreme Expose: Kelly Kelly, Layla El, and Brooke Adams stunk up the ECW ring with their dancing on a weekly basis. These three “Divas” are about as useless as milk at a gay bar. Layla El is a professional dancer but when she’s dancing next to two uncoordinated bafoons it only makes her look as bad as the other two. While ECW wrestlers were getting released seemingly on a weekly basis, or sitting backstage braiding their leg hairs, this trio of skin and bones wasted everybodys time with poorly coreographed performances in the ring. The performances got such negative reactions that they completely turned off the crowd mics and piped in loud music over the TV screen. Perhaps the only thing worse is that they think fans want this junk.

“The Pop Princess” Jillian Hall: WWE’s answer to reality television’s American Idol was to saddle Jillian Hall with a bad singer gimmick. Jillian Hall, who is a highly-trained athletic women’s wrestler, has never gotten a real opportunity to show her skills in a WWE ring with serious competition. On the surface, many people would assume that the gimmick was a rip-off of American Idol – however, I find it very ironic that Jillian’s Idol gimmick was launched around the same time Hulk Hogan severed all ties with Vince McMahon and the WWE. I believe Jillian’s gimmick is a direct shot at Hulk’s daughter Brook Hogan, who is unsuccessfully trying to to kick start a singing career. The only reason anybody knows Brooke’s name is because her famous father is always two steps behind her. I’m begging WWE, please just let Jillian wrestle!

My Breakfast with the New Breed: One the most bone-headed decisions in the history of professional wrestling took place when WWE turned mega babyface C.M. Punk heel and aligned him with a faction known as the New Breed (with Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von, Matt Striker, Kevin Thorn and Ariel). The creative department thankfully came to their senses and within a week Punk was already rebelling against his new friends and maintaining his babyface status. The covered their tracks by explaining that Punk actually joined the New Breed to destroy it from within. Yeah, right WWE, I’m sure that was the plan all along. C.M. Punk continued his ascent up the ECW ladder and was challenging for the ECW World title by summer time. C.M. Punk is the one true break-out star of the new Extreme Championship Wrestling.

The Self-Proclaimed King of Extreme: Vince McMahon defeated Bobby Lashley to capture the ECW World title and spit in the faces of every former ECW wrestler and ECW fan. There were several shameful factors to this scenario; First, former ECW Champion Tazz was forced to say that he supports Vince McMahon as ECW Champion. Come on Tazz why’d you have to sell out like that? Then McMahon started a feud with all the ECW Originals and seemed like he was burying them week after week after week after week. There was nothing “extreme” about Mr. McMahon, he didn’t even defend his ECW World title until the next PPV and even then he didn’t even get physically involved in the match. Then he faced Bobby Lashley again at One Night Stand and finally did the job and lost the championship in a Street Fight.

The Jobification of Sabu: Sabu has legendary wrestling status running through his veins. He should be held in the same esteem as guys like Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker. However, WWE in its infinite wisdom has continually buried this legend just because their writers are too stupid to understand the complex nature of Sabu’s character. They do understand that there is something special about him, so they keep making him job to the less established young punks of the WWE ranks.

Throw It On Me: Instead of trying to win back the wrestling fan demographic, the WWE constantly tries to cater to the unloyal non-wrestling fan demographic. There isn’t much cross-over interest between fans of WWE and fans of hip hop music – but that didn’t stop WWE from teaming up with recording artist Timberland for a music video featuring several of the more useless WWE Divas. Timberland’s big music video featuring Torrie Wilson, Ashley Massaro, Maryse Ouellet, Kelly Kelly, Layla El, and Brooke Adams should have been called “Throw It In The Garbage.”

Mark Henry Is Back, Run for your Life: Mark Henry decade of diSTINKtion started in 1996 when he signed a 10-year contract with the WWE. Fans anticipated the year 2006 as the year they would finally be rid of this hideous monster from their television sets. Instead of being let go, Mark Henry was somehow resigned to a contract dispite a 10-year run as one of the WWE’s least “over” wrestlers. Even when he got a monster push from the writers he was never really respected by the fans. It didn’t help that he was “injuring” superstar after superstar with his careless wrestling style. He himself with down to injury in late 2006, but returned to the WWE in 2007 and the disabled list magically filled up with various WWE superstars.

Goodbye Ariel, We Hardly Knew You: Ariel (aka Shelly Martinez) was suddenly released from her WWE contract. What a bummer! She, like many others who are unceremoneously thrown aside by WWE, never ever had a chance to shine. It was obvious by the voting in the 2007 OWW Awards that Ariel was extremely OVER with the fans. She was engrossed in the top feud in ECW (The New Breed vs. ECW Originals), and she was an important factor in the gimmick used by Kevin Thorn – who has been a major disappointment since losing Ariel. What in the blue hell did this beautiful, multi-talented, loyal, under-rated Diva do to earn her release from the WWE? Perhaps she asked for her release. Perhaps she walked in on Mr. McMahon polishing his grapefruits? Perhaps she was caught looking at Paul Levesque for too long.

General Manager Vickie Guerrero: God bless Vickie Guerrero, but she needs to be at home taking care of her family. WWE television is not the place for the Guerrero widow to be. Her husband Eddie is one of the greatest wrestlers to every step foot inside a wrestling ring, but obviously none of that rubbed off on poor Vickie. She initially popped up on WWE TV as the trouble-shooter in the feud between Chavo Guerrero and Rey Mysterio before turning heel and siding with brother-in-law Chavo. After that storyline went no-where and did nothing for anybody she disappeared from the spotlight. Then suddenly she showed up as gal-pal to SD! Diva Kristal Marshall, who immediately started getting her freak on with General Manager Theodore Long. After a couple of months of dating, Kristal convinced her “Teddy Bear” to hire Vickie Guerrero as his assistent GM so he could spent more time with her. Mrs. Guerrero’s stint as General Manager of SmackDown! was pointless and void of any entertainment value.

Mr. McMahon – Emotional Wreck: Two weeks after he lost the ECW World championship against Bobby Lashley at One Night Stand, Vince became a psychopath. He made Torrie Wilson have a match against Carlito, put WWE champion John Cena in a triple threat match with two monster opponents (The Great Khali and Umaga), and even made the Hardy Boyz (who were in a ladder match the night before) lose the World Tag Team titles to Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch. He suspended Ashley Massaro, put IC champion Santino Marella in a match for his championship, made Ric Flair be destroyed by Randy Orton, talk really crazy to Vickie Guerrero, Teddy Long and Kristal Marshall and then put Matt Hardy in a handicap match against WWE Tag Team champions Deuce & Domino. [written by Lise Lucia]

Mr. McMahon – Rest in Pieces: But then the next week on RAW, it was the night the draft happened and Vince also made it “Mr. McMahon Appreciation Night” then later on before the show ended his limo blew up and he is supposed to be “dead.” Next the FBI was brought it to investigate who killed him, which was a complete waste of time on RAW, SmackDown! and ECW programming.. [written by Lise Lucia]

Two weeks later the entire storyline was thrown out due to the real life tragedy involving Chris Benoit.

Theodore Long & Kristal Marshall: The culmination of a terribly long and uneventful romantic storyline between SmackDown! GM Theodore Long and Kristal Marshal, which included Long being manipulated into sharing his GM duties with Vickie Guerrero, came to a climax when Theodore Long proposed to Kristal in the middle of a WWE ring. Kristal exposed her infinite lack of acting skills as she broke down crying and then turned and ran away from the ring, stopping for a brief moment, but then sprinting backstage. Long picked up the pieces of his broken heart and went backstage to talk to Kristal, who only changed her mind and agreed to marry her “Teddy Bear” after seeing the ring. Typical woman!

Unrealistic Plastic Diva Champion: The terribly untalented plastic barbie doll Candice Michelle started out scoring numerous victories over trained athletic women wrestlers like Victoria and WWE Women’s Champion Melina Perez. I didn’t have much of a problem with her winning matches once in a while, but the thing that DID offend me was when she defeated MY GIRL Melina Perez at WWE Vengeance 2007 for the WWE Women’s Championship. Not since Stephanie McMahon held the WWE Women’s title has their been a less deserving champions. Seriously, raise your hand if you think Candice’s reign as champion should end AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Johnny Nitro becomes John Morrison: Interesting….Johnny Nitro, who beat C.M. Punk at Night of Champions 2007, winning the vacant ECW Championship, in a huge shocker. But then two days later on am episode of ECW, a man came and told General Manager Armando Estrada that Johnny Nitro would no longer be on ECW. What is WWE up to here? Will it be Punk versus another much deserving spot of the ECW Roster? Nope…. he is now known as John Morrison…. I don’t know either to laugh or cry at what WWE has done. John Morrison? He changed his name…. I am speechless. There is no point to this as there is a point to a ball. You do not disappoint WWE!!!!! (written by Craig “Hell Minister” Lindblom)

The Illegitimate McMahon: Quite the way to end the 2007 reign!!! On the night of Vince’s return to RAW after his so called “death,” we got to see him reenact the night of said “death” just for Coachman to tell him that he has a illegitimate child. So now we are stuck dealing with this travesty that we are supposed to be wondering, and that we did…that we did. So each week we got to see different wrestlers confronting him, wondering if they are his child.

We even got to see Kane break continuity by saying he didn’t know his father [unless Paul Bearer got thin and grew, changed his name and took over WWE, then Kane forgot about him, then yes Kane, you don’t know him] Vince saying he slept with Melina so no possible way she is his daughter [called incest Vince… it’s out there buddy! But of course…none of that, we can have people sleeping with corpses, but not their daughters… that’s just nasty!]

So Kennedy [who is supposed to be his son] is suspended, so WWE gets to choose who is next to be in line. We get to witness the entire roster be out there. We go through a bunch of clues of process of elimination. They say he is not Extreme, but for some reason Sandman is in the final 3. Well it gets down to HHH, JBL, and Sandman. “He likes to play the game” So it’s HHH? Alrighty… that’s… weird. But nope, the creative department gives us….. the Little Bastard! Hornswoggle!!!! [later on we find out it’s not really his son… thank God!] And that concludes WWE Hall of Shame 2007.