10 Times WWE Didn’t Learn Their Lesson
9. Incest Is Unpleasant
In 1999, the WWF was unencumbered by taste. The ribald procession of lopped-off c*cks, goo-covered hands and inflated breasts had catapulted the company back into the mainstream consciousness. Why not keep it in the family?
Probably because the vast majority of fans rejected the teased Beaver Cleavage character - a man-child who made Oedipus look like the idealised lead of a romantic comedy. Beaver's cereal was dry, but no matter: his mother had some milk with which to help it down his gullet. Mercifully, the character was abandoned after a sole match, against Christian, on the May 25 RAW. Common sense had prevailed: nobody wanted incest to marry with wrestling and produce a grotesque, deformed offspring.
Except Vince McMahon. For reasons which don't bear thinking about - we can only hope there were dollar signs in his eyes - McMahon, hoping to recapture the fading Attitude Era buzz, proposed a 2003 angle to his daughter Stephanie in which he would be named as the father of her unborn child. Thankfully, she nixed it there and then on moral grounds. McMahon relented. The thought of Stephanie's father impregnating her was unsettling...so, he reasoned, why not insert her brother Shane in his place?
Neither angle even made it close to the air - but that the suggestion was even made public painted a hillbilly picture of the company McMahon has spent his life attempting to distance himself from.