10 Awesome Things You Don't Remember About WWE's Ruthless Aggression Era
6. A One-Legged Man In An Ass-Kicking Contest
Casting a one-legged teenager as the whipped underdog in a long-running wrestling angle is one of Vince McMahons more harebrained ideas, especially given that Zach Gowen - whod only just turned twenty a matter of weeks before his May 2003 debut on Smackdown, and whod lost his left leg to cancer at the age of eight - would be forced into competition with Rowdy Roddy Piper, the Big Show and Brock bloody Lesnar.
But a high point for any beaten dog in WWE storylines is when your revolting boss decides to enhance his heel heat by beating the crap out of you himself. And at the Vengeance pay-per-view in July, with an upcoming feud with the Undertaker and his own daughter Stephanie to build up to, McMahon booked himself to do just that.
Its a match so well remembered that it's not even mentioned on Vincent Kennedy McMahon's Wikipedia page. Gowen received some offence, but as a scrawny kid who looked a good half his real age (never mind the missing leg), anything he did in there except get crushed was always going to look contrived.
No, this is an exceptional case of an exceptional performer rising to the occasion. Vince McMahon is not a wrestler, no matter how much he secretly wishes he was, but in the right situation he can be magical in the ring. The wrong circumstances gets us Hart vs. McMahon at WrestleMania XXVI, the obnoxious stink of which still hasnt quite left Glendale, Arizona some six years later.
The right circumstances get us his match later on this year against the Undertaker (a one-sided, bloody beatdown which McMahon sells like the commission was feeding his family), and this one. Its a little too long, but McMahons character work is on point.
Whats more, the unexpected gusher of a head wound after a viciously dropkicked chair to Vinces face - which looks just like a bladejob, but which Gowen maintains to this day was hardway - adds sudden drama, and gets Gowen over to the point where youre almost invested in him winning.