10 Fascinating WWE Royal Rumble 1991 Facts
9. There Was Talk That People Within WWE Would Resign Over The Iraq War Storyline
It was clear which buttons Vince McMahon was pushing when he had the suddenly-pro-Iraq Slaughter dethrone The Ultimate Warrior, WWE Champion of more than nine months. Warrior was clad in red, white, and blue war paint, tights and tassels, in case the message needed any more spelling out.
According to The Wrestling Observer, there were those in the locker room and office alike that were considering resigning from the company following Slaughter's victory, seeing it as trivializing very real loss of life overseas. At the very least, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas refused to be a part of WrestleMania 7, due to the angle.
Bret Hart at least echoed the troubled locker room sentiment in his autobiography, noting, "Some of us (among the wrestlers) debated whether wrestling was too much of a cartoon to make light of something as serious as war, especially one where the U.S. was bracing for a high body count."