There was once a time in WWE called 2003, a time where Triple H was the WWE Champion, and madness ensued. After feuding with Kane on and off since October 2002, Triple H offered Kane a spot in his stable Evolution after Kane and Rob Van Dam lost the Tag Team Championships to La Resistance at the June 2003 Bad Blood Pay-Per-View. Then Monday Night Raw co-general manager Stone Cold Steve Austin offered Kane the opportunity to face Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship, an offer counter-offered by fellow co-general manager Eric Bischoff insisting that if Kane lost said title match, he would unmask. After accepting the offer for the match, Triple H defeated Kane with Evolution's assistance, and Kane unmasked on the June 23, 2003 episode of Raw. Narcissism plays into this as Kane was "emotionally unstable" because of the "psychological scarring" he suffered, instead of the believed physical scarring to his face from being in a fire. Subsequent to being unmasked, Kane's bizarre anti-narcissism pushed him into attacking Jim Ross and setting him on fire, Tombstone piledriving Linda McMahon on the Raw stage and attempting to use a battery to electrocute Shane McMahon's testicles. Narcissism has never had a greater cost attached to it, ever.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
