10 Times WWE Tried (And Failed) To Be Edgy
3. Billy & Chuck’s Publicity Stunt
Go back to watch the wedding between Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo now and you'll understand why so many folks were horrified by it at the time. The tag-team's entire gimmick revolved around question marks over their sexuality - were Billy & Chuck a gay couple, or were they just pretending?
Yeah...
WWE's next move was to heavily promote a ceremony that'd see both guys tie the knot on SmackDown. Come the wedding, Billy and Chuck got cold feet on the whole thing and revealed that they'd been working a publicity stunt for attention. Overnight, they went from slapping each other's butts to...not doing that.
In years since, several have claimed that WWE missed the chance to positively promote homosexual characters on TV, but Billy and Chuck were walking stereotypes more than an attempt to portray realistic gay men long before the angle's closure.
The whole thing was a colossal failure, and one that p*ssed many people right off.