10 Steps WWE Took To Become The Most Toxic Wrestling Company Ever
8. The Bigger Boy In Class
When WCW battered the WWF in the early Monday Night War battles, with the help of Golden Age veterans no less, Vince McMahon lashed out via the tragically counterproductive early 1996 Billionaire Ted skits.
Ted Turner was depicted as a gap-toothed plagiarist devoid of original thought - and, later, a man too dumb to acknowledge his abhorrent racism. Nacho Man and the Huckster were two terrible puns depicted as dinosaurs impervious to evolution (that joke, ultimately, was on Vince). The skits were conceived for an audience of one - which was dumber than it reads on the surface. The WWF's audience was in decline during a lull period, in which the only viable competition ascended in parallel. Not for the last time, Vince preferred to indulge himself than service his fanbase.
This us versus them, siege mentality had already been engendered as a result of the series of scandals that rocked the WWF in the early 1990s; McMahon perceived these prosecutions as an affront to himself and his company, as opposed to crusades in the public interest. Defeating the government was a monumental ego boost for McMahon; it reinforced his might and his nous, allowing him the luxury of total single-mindedness.
This only grew when McMahon ultimately towered over the competition.