10 Precise Moments Kayfabe Ended
7. "I Respect You, Booker Man"
In an era of talent agency, and a creeping reception to a change everybody knew was needed (but didn't know how to effect), Brian Pillman's maverick, devised ideas made it to WCW television in the mid-1990s.
Pillman sought to use creativity when he couldn't draw on his size, nor the established star power WCW deemed a requirement to compete with the WWF. His revolutionary 'Loose Cannon' persona was, in pitch and superb performance, magnificent. Pillman, erratic in his body language, with his eyes peeled white, played the role of the unhinged wild man so well that many thought it real. It was a self-serving gimmick, but it was the most self-serving of times. If Hulk Hogan was the established star with creative control, Pillman fashioned himself as an iconoclast - the Loose Cannon in a fixed world - to be received as a counter-cultural icon to an audience he was clever enough to know was ready for a revolution.
At SuperBrawl '96, Pillman, working everybody with Eric Bischoff - and Bischoff - grabbed a mic a minute into his raucous brawl with Kevin Sullivan, and said "I respect you, booker man".
There's an irony to this narrative (and indeed this list): why was Pillman so revered, where Vince Russo was so reviled?
Pillman's message was coded; it meant nothing to the casuals, and served as a fascinating complement to the hardcores. Russo's approach to kayfabe minimised it to a point that it bore no meaning.
There was nothing left to rebel against.