10 Times WWE Used Major News Events In Questionable Taste
Wrestling stories ripped from the headlines, that probably should have stayed there.
Controversy, as Eric Bischoff liked to say, creates cash. Even before he said it, pro wrestling was scavenging popular culture and current events for material for the stories they wanted to tell in the ring, both for inspiration for their writers and as a way to grab the attention of an increasingly jaded audience.
When old-school heroes and villains weren't enough, when wrestling moved from territorial shows to nationwide and then international television, wrestling had to step up its game to get eyes on the product. Sometimes it went to film and television or timeless story tropes, but just as often, it went to the news.
Grabbing a storyline from the headlines works well enough for soap operas and a lot of the time it works for wrestling, too. But the thing about using current events in a story is that those events are real, involve actual human beings, and affect the lives of the same people who might be your audience.
Sometimes the WWE caught flak for its use of current events in storylines, other times it's only in hindsight they become objectionable, but in all such unfortunate cases the House of McMahon failed to conduct itself in the best possible taste.
10. John Wayne Bobbitt
John Wayne Bobbitt is famous for having his penis cut off by his then wife, Lorena. There's no easy way to put that so let's just get it over with. The unpleasantness transpired in 1993 and Bobbitt became a pop culture phenomenon.
The WWE got round to cashing in on Bobbit in 1998. It had just aired a storyline in which Val Venis, whose gimmick was pornographic actor, had feuded with Japanese faction Kaientai and their manager, Mr Yamaguchi. In response to kayfabe accusations that Venis had slept with his wife, Yamaguchi-san kayfabe chopped off Val Venis' appendage with the words "I choppy choppy your pee pee" in the most Attitude Era segment ever aired.
It was later revealed that the Little Valbowski had been saved by fear-shrinkage, and the advice of his 'friend', John Wayne Bobbitt, who actually appeared on Raw. The WWE seemed not to care that the Bobbitt incident was surrounded by issues of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and was evidently convinced that severed penises were hilarious.