10 Times WWE Purposefully Lied To Sell A PPV
Card subject to change.
Mark Twain famously quipped in his notebook that, "if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." Somewhere scrawled parenthetically in the margin he also added: "but you do make a lot less money."
Lying in advertising is nothing new. That new-fangled toothpaste probably won't leave your teeth whiter than Trump's cabinet, and nor will those fluorescent football boots make you play like the ghost of the (admittedly not dead) Pelé. It's an ancient, well-honed art, and one adroitly employed by the wrestling business as well as any industry. And for a sport built on deception, it's really no surprise that promoters have been telling porkies since the first bell was rung.
Like being told by your mother you're a special, beautiful flower, there are lies we can accept. We all know Andre the Giant wasn't really seven foot tall, or that The Undertaker probably isn't an undead mortician. But there are some wrestling whoppers which would make a withering Anne Robinson and her Watchdog team raise their eyebrows. It's one thing to massage the truth, but something else to outright defraud paying customers with a complete fib.
Given previous form, it's a wonder WWE don't outright advertise Hulk Hogan vs. Steve Austin for every event. Oh wait, there is a reason they don't do that.
10. One Night Stand 2008 - See No Evil Here
Take a long hard look at this poster for One Night Stand 2008. Notice anything unusual about it?
It's Kane. Besides looking like an encephalitic bodybuilding butcher during a striptease, the fact the 'Big Red Machine' is even on the advertising literature is distinctly strange, given he wasn't scheduled to appear on the show whatsoever.
In many ways, it was a final act of indignity to a show designed as an homage to Paul Heyman's renegade ECW promotion. Not only had their once a year celebration of devastation been turned into a generic cross-brand event, but ECW's champ wasn't even present - despite dominating the poster. (Though to be fair, it was Kane, so who really cared by this point?)
It's all the more baffling when you consider the PPV could have been sold on the actual main event, a small matter of The Undertaker taking on Edge in a TLC match. But no, here's Kane in a sexy pinny.