8 Worst Improvised Moments That Made It To WWE TV

8. Million Dollar Mania

Vince McMahon was known, professionally, as a promotional genius. He was, for a time. 

As the 2000s unfolded, he started to lose it. He had the entire wrestling world to capture, given his monopoly, and instead of offering a wide-ranging product with which to do exactly that, he essentially kept doing the Attitude Era, only with fewer needle-moving stars and additional Triple H, and calling it Ruthless Aggression. 

By 2008, he was finished, but there was no big-arena alternative. Some fans liked WWE; others hate-watched it, or kept up out of habit and undying, naive hope. What else were they going to do? 

WWE was your terrible sports team. You hated them, and they hated you back, but you were stuck. 

This was best (?) underscored by the desperation of McMahon’s ‘Million Dollar Mania’ initiative, the basic thrust of which was Vince begging you to tune into Raw under the promise of possibly winning a million big ones. 

Except, nobody was going to win the full milli because that was the maximum prize fund. 

This made for excruciating TV, since Vince could hardly script the calls. Then again, this was 2008; if he was able to do that, it would have been equally awful. Vince entered the stage. He made calls. He failed to dial the correct number three times, was twice Rickrolled, and was disconnected - all across a single segment. 

He did not know how to operate a telephone correctly, much less build new stars. Even Mr. Burns - a parody of an ancient billionaire - eventually learned how to do that!