10 Wrestling Gimmicks Which Were Massive Ribs
6. Willie Watts
The very first time Paul Heyman met Bill Watts, the veteran Oklahoman immediately demonstrated his inveterate intolerance.
"Where's your beanie?" Watts allegedly guffawed in the direction of the Jewish Heyman, in an insulting reference to the yarmulke. It didn't make a good first impression - and nor was it an isolated incident.
Speaking to SLAM! Wrestling back in 2009, Heyman recounted the time WCW's ratings surfaced showing his segment alongside Debrah 'Madusa' Miceli had came in strongest. "In front of a room full of people, Watts says how p*ssed off it makes him that a Jew and a c*nt drew the highest rating of the show. He felt it was the downfall of the wrestling business."
Wrestling apocrypha maintains that Watts reserved one final anti-Semitic barb for Paul Heyman on his way out of WCW in 1993, dismissing the manager as "nothing but a fat, bald Jew." Most people would have made it an issue for an employment tribunal, but not Paul, who got his own back doing what he did best - promoting pro-wrestling.
During May of 1994, with Joey Styles on sabbatical over a pay dispute, Heyman drafted in an African-American announcer by the name of Willie Watts - an obvious play on the racism storm which had lost Cowboy Bill his own WCW job. It was some length to take for a rib - the phony Watts was absolutely terrible at his job.