10 Wild Wrestling Plans That Were JUST NOW Discovered
Brawl For All? Kennel From Hell? Wait 'til you read what Vince Russo COULDN'T get on WWE TV...
By now, you'll have read about the most infamously awful wrestling plans that even WWE thought were too stupid to actually broadcast - which really is saying something, since this is a company that thought it was a good idea to exploit the death of Eddie Guerrero.
And push Kane for 20 years.
You'll know about the crazed pitch for WWE to thaw a cryogenically frozen nazi and debut him in the 2000s. You'll know about the plan to send Hardcore Holly into outer space complete with a chimpanzee mascot, which is fabulous. Just imagine the backstage interviews.
"Find anything on the moon there, Bob?"
"Your ass, sh*t-brain. F*ck off."
You'll know about the pitch for CM Punk to debut as WWE's first deaf wrestler, which, get to f*ck. That idea was so insensitive, so wasteful and so ultimately pointless. One can only imagine the awful skits the writers would come up with for it, like Punk failing to hear an imminent threat or misinterpreting a heel promo as something nice etc.
But what about those plans that have only just been revealed?
10. The Shotgun Saturday Night Tough Guy Champion
On a recent edition of his 'Experience' podcast, Jim Cornette claimed to have retained in his possession, for 25 years, a list of wild and naturally awful Vince Russo ideas. He deduced that these alleged ideas were Russo's because they were so sh*tty. He offered up Shane McMahon as an alternative, but since none of the ideas involved Shane himself annihilating Dan Severn to a bloody pulp, they can't have been his.
This list actually represents the origin story behind the fabled, pathetic Russo Vs. Cornette saga: it was when reading this list of pitches that Cornette first determined he and Russo would not prove to be effective collaborators.
Pitched before the disastrous RAW of March 3, 1997, the taped Berlin show that looked indistinguishable to Heroes of Wrestling from a production standpoint - a show so stripped-back in its wrestling brilliance that Vince McMahon deduced, with Russo's urging, that wrestling itself was the problem - this was Russo's attempt to worm himself into the process.
Astonishingly, it worked, despite one such idea suggesting the creation of a new title: the Shotgun Tough Guy champion!
Per "Russo", the champ would defend the title exclusively on the experimental Shotgun Saturday Night show, and naturally, it would be contested exclusively in gimmick matches - "bar room stool in each man's corner, tables, whatever".
Now, here's something. The tables match was not invented until three years later, and was so successful that it remains a fixture to this day. Is this "list of ideas" on the level, or was Russo not that bad?
The word "whatever" here is very telling, mind. The subtext is hard not to read as "whatever, as long as it isn't a boring wrestling match".
Russo pitched Crush as the first Tough Guy Champion, and was going to have a precious badge instead of a belt. You know, the kind of thing a kid wears when they want to be a police officer.
This was not the only asinine idea that Russo scribbled down...