10 Most Random WWE Appearances
6. Dory Funk, Jr. Turns Up At The 1996 Royal Rumble
Vince McMahon has this weird thing about ageing, in that he cannot bear the idea of it happening to anybody, not just himself.
He has dyed his hair, eyebrows and perv moustache printer ink black to deny that the process is happening to him, and has even in the past ordered his backstage producers to conceal their grey hair. They're not even on television, so what's happening there?
Does he think that, if nobody around him ages, then ageing itself...doesn't happen?
It's another inscrutable psychological quirk of Vince's that, as ever, he has contradicted on a whim.
He didn't however have the luxury of being a crazed despot in 1996, when he lacked the money and power to control a wrestling world decimated by the collapse of a territory system. When it came time to book his annual Royal Rumble match, he had to rely on some odd names, one of which was a very old-looking Dory Funk, Jr., who was 55 years old at the time.
A great of his time, he was nonetheless antithetical to Vince's type of wrestler: an ancient star of the territory days of yore who was pale with scraggly hair and grizzled.
Vince stared into the cold abyss of death when gazing upon Dory Funk, Jr's face - and had the temerity to bury Hulk Hogan for being too old at the exact same time because they do in fact stack sh*t that high.