10 Moments You Can’t Believe WWE Left On The Network
7. Blackdust
WWE is a publicly traded company, operating under PG guidelines in order to attract as much sponsorship revenue as possible. You might think this would compel them to revise history as and when it can. It didn't erase Chris Benoit from its records, likely because the work involved would be immense, and the end result would create a furore that would only draw unwanted attention to the grisly events of June 2007.
A throwaway TV match in which one of its performers dressed up as a questionable fusion of blaxploitation and minstrel show is something else entirely, and yet Savio Vega Vs. The Artist Formerly Known As Goldust, from the January 5, 1998 RAW, remains available to revisit in its full dubiousness. Again, the ethical debate is almost immaterial. WWE portrays itself as a progressive organisation and is not above shaping history to its own benefit.
Back in late 1997 and early 1998, Dustin Runnels disavowed the controversial Goldust persona. Any suggestion that the man behind the paint did so on moral grounds was destroyed when he emerged for this match, blacked-up, as Shaft. The WWF was on the pulse elsewhere at this time, tapping into the wider zeitgeist - but even then it was retrograde. Commentator Jerry Lawler dusted off his 1970s references, as if anybody watching the WWF knew what The Mob Squad was.
This isn't Social Justice Warrior activism - this is a man performing as a minstrel decades after it was petitioned against in the 1960s.