25 Most OUT OF POCKET WWE Attitude Era Moments

13. Billy Gunn Is Going To What A What In Shawn Michaels’ What?!

Billy Gunn is the foremost example of the cruelty of which some fans are capable. 

Until his career renaissance in AEW, which he tarnished by treating Jay White like some 1990s WWF job guy but whatever, Gunn was primarily known as a failed singles wrestler. He was the guy who the Rock buried, whose entrance music made Def Rebel sound good, who was such a useless King Of The Ring winner that he became the Marty Jannetty go-to insult of a tournament that Mabel had also won. Mabel! 

It’s probably more fair to list his accomplishments. He was one of the most over wrestlers in the hottest year of WWE history, 1998, and if you actually watched the product back then, you’d know that he and Road Dogg actually did save a tag team division that might never have been worse. The thing about Billy Gunn, though, is that he invited this ridicule with some bizarre statements. Gunn, when falling afoul of DX’s former leader, once said: “Shawn Michaels, you can hide behind that Commissioner stuff - just so long until I jerk a knot in your ass”. 

What was he getting at here? 

It sounds like a brilliant bit of unintentional homoeroticism, which is always funny when the very straight pro wrestler stumbles their way into it - but even when you learn that he says “knot” and not “nut”, it’s still a strange thing to say. 

How does one jerk a knot in someone’s ass? 

Well, a cursory Google indicates that “jerk a knot in your tail” is a threat of imminent physicality in some southern states. But it was the Attitude Era. If he’d said this, he’d have sounded like he was working the Georgia territory in the 1980s, so, conscious of that, Billy updated “tail” to “ass” without considering that it sounded a lot like he was going to pleasure himself while standing directly behind Shawn Michaels.