10 WWE Attitude Era Disasters That Even Jim Ross Couldn’t Get Over

3. Hawk, The Alcoholic, "Falls" Off The Titantron

Incorporating real-life tragedy into a wrestler's storyline was nothing new for Vince McMahon when he decided to take Hawk's honest-to-goodness alcoholism and integrate it into his rivalry with newly-minted Road Warrior, Droz. The whole concept of Hawk being jealous of the new, third member of the Road Warriors was fine...right up until it placed Hawk, dressed in street clothes, atop the Titantron, threatening to kill himself in front of a packed arena. When Droz starts to make his way up the Titantron to "talk Hawk down," things start to get pretty dicey. Animal is begging Hawk not to do anything stupid, citing a lot of real-world details about their relationship (and Hawk's troubles with alcohol) in his pleas. Breaking the fourth wall is neat sometimes, but this wasn't the way to do it. Of course, having Droz push Hawk off the Titantron (falling behind the screen so that viewers knew he probably fell on a very large cushion) pretty much turned the whole thing into a joke. Nobody really believed, for even a second, that Hawk was actually hurt in the fall, but that didn't stop J.R. from trying to make it seem real:

"Oh my God...he fell."

This line wasn't delivered in typical J.R. fashion--shouting himself hoarse while decreeing him dead or, at the very least, broken in half--it was almost whispered, like the commentator really couldn't believe what happened. Which only made it more awkward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9geNPA9zQPA The fact that Owen Hart would actually fall to his death a mere 6 months later only reaffirmed how tasteless this whole angle wound up in hindsight.