10 Seedy WWE Stories Vince McMahon Wants You To Forget
Remember The Titans.
A medium designed to hook its audience with the same veracity as that first cigarette, wrestling operates around the idea that a fan found young is a fan kept for life. Broad brush strokes make for often-beautiful art, but companies are just as content to throw a million differing bright colours at the canvas if the eye-catching outcome embeds itself deep enough.
The first day of a wrestling addiction is the first moment of realisation that you are an outsider. It's a curious but captivating relationship to engage in, but naturally creates a thirst to know more. In keeping with what they do in front of the camera, wrestlers have traditionally worked hard to protect the behind-the-scenes secrets too. The wiring is often faulty though - contradictory shoot interviews tell stories ten different ways. None less entertaining than another, but finding the truth amongst the subtext and sleaze can be as hard as it is humorous.
In his must-read "Mad Lies Of Hulk Hogan" essay, writer Stuart Millard refers to 'The Hulkster' as "the orange Walter Mitty" for the chaotic recountings of a life so well-lived he lost sight of what actually happened in it. Mad f*cker Kevin "Nailz" Wacholz said he "hated Vince McMahon's guts" during the 1994 steroid trial, completely burying himself as a useful component for the prosecution in the process.
Star wrestlers, as it turned out, we're not star witnesses. If only the internet's historical preservation in recent years had Hogan's questionable "memory"...
10. Crown Jewel
The phrase "Sportswashing" was recently coined to describe the ongoing attempts of the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia's efforts to reframe how the world views their culture and practices via the hosting of major sporting events - but WWE's second of 20 shows over the next ten years was the most crucial for them to get through.
Not so much swimming in controversy as they were drowning in it, the company simply buried their heads in the sand as news continued to break on the grisly end journalist Jamal Khashoggi met following his trip to the Saudi consulate just weeks beforehand, in spite of the world's appalled shock.
The show, by the way, was a f*cking piece of sh*t, but no silly Sports Entertainment - even the best kind - was going to clear the grim cloud hanging above it anyway. Shane McMahon winning a tournament to be crowned "Best In The World" was a troll job, whilst Kane's wig fell off in a pathetic main event featuring the depressing return of Shawn Michaels, but WWE's mask had slipped weeks before that.