10 Times WWE Made Us Ashamed To Be Wrestling Fans

In 2017, WWE like to present themselves as a family-friendly, wholesome entertainment company, putting smiles on faces across the globe with their own unique blend of gripping storytelling, incredible athletics, and show-stopping production values. Although the occasional mild profanity might slip through on TV from time to time, by and large they are proud that they present a show the whole family can watch together.

It wasn’t always this way, however. The history of WWE is littered with storylines, matches, and angles which didn’t just skirt on the line of bad taste; they smashed through it with a steel chair. In the gritty, ratings-grabbing and controversy-courting times of the mid-90s through to early 2000s, the company would seemingly try anything at all to get people talking. Many of these moments are brushed under the carpet now, but even at the time, most fans of professional wrestling were shaking their head, ashamed of what their passion had become.

Join us now as we shine a light on some of the darkest moments in WWE history, ones that are probably best left alone. If you were not a fan at the time, consider yourself lucky that you didn’t have to witness these atrocities on your TV. You have been warned…

Following his loss at WrestleMania XX to his returning undead brother The Undertaker, Kane decided to focus on a different goal, namely the lovely Lita. Unfortunately for the Big Red Machine, Lita was at the time involved with Matt Hardy (both on-screen and off), and so was disinclined to accept the advances.

Never one to do the decent (and tasteful) thing, Kane instead went a different route, and was implied to have threatened Lita to either sleep with him, or he would take it out on her boyfriend Matt Hardy. Lita (of course) agreed to this, which resulted in her becoming pregnant with Kane’s baby, to the outrage of Matt and all viewers with any semblance of taste.

This whole debacle came to a head at SummerSlam 2004, where Matt and Kane met in a horrifically-named “Till Death Us Do Part Match”, the stipulation of which was that Lita would marry the winner. Quite why Lita would take the chance that she would be contractually obliged to marry her rapist was never adequately explained. Kane would of course win the match and Lita’s hand in marriage, only for her to miscarry after Kane fell onto her following a chairshot from a debuting Gene Snitsky.

If you feel like you’ve lost IQ points just reading that, join the club.