10 Most Bizarre Stories From Former WWE Superstars

2. Vince McMahon On Donahue

On March 16, 1992, at the height of the steroid and sexual abuse scandals being levied against the WWF, Vince McMahon appeared on Phil Donahue's daytime talk program to address allegations against him. Think that McMahon on Steve Austin's podcast was something else? Well, this appearance trumps that.

He was on the same panel as pro wrestling radio host John Arezzi (who was at the time friends with yes, then fellow New York radio host and later WWF creative team member Vince Russo) and the editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer.

Bizarre for any era, that's a ton of combustible elements in one place at the same time. Here's Dave Meltzer's thoughts on the event.

Yeah, that was a crazy period and I remember that day very well. There was a lot of stuff that happened that day. I was not supposed to be sitting next to Vince. The focal point was supposed to be Vince and Bruno . Vince was the big star and Bruno was the legend and they were supposed to be in the middle and I was supposed to be off to the side. The ended up switching my chair with Bruno's because of fear of what would happen if Vince and Bruno were sitting together. Bruno was very mad at Vince at that time because a couple of days earlier, they were on Larry King. Things happened on Larry King, there was a lot of double-talk that made Bruno look bad.Bruno brought up that the (later anti-steroid early 90s WWF offshoot bodybuilding company) WBF announcer said so and so and so. Vince just goes, 'That guy was never the WBF announcer,' just to make Bruno look bad on TV. In fact, he was the WBF announcer. Or when the name (of accused of sexual improprieties with male Federation ring attendants) Mel Philips came up, Vince goes, 'Mel Philips never worked a day in the WWE.'It makes it look like Bruno is this out-of-touch guy talking about this Mel Philips, when Mel Philips was an independent contractor who had worked solely for WWF for years. Not only that, his home address for the athletic commissions was the WWF corporate offices.Bruno was very, very upset that day at Vince and so it was for everyone's best concern that I sat next to Vince. So, I did. The funny part was -- and I think a lot of people knows this -- I was talking to Vince during every commercial break. It was a long hour for him. I remember at the 45 minute mark, he said something to me like, 'This is the longest hour of my life.'It was definitely a very different Vince from what you would see, I think, any other time. I don't think there's ever been a TV show where Vince was like that.