10 WWE Storylines That Horribly Backfired
5. Three Million Dollars Worth Of Embarrassment
In 2008, Vince McMahon would instigate yet another utterly pointless non-wrestling angle on his wrestling show, when he decided to give away a million dollars every week on Monday Night RAW. Fans would register their telephone numbers online, and a selection of random entries would be called every Monday evening, live from the stage, to be offered money by the (kayfabe) billionaire. The whole segment was a colossal nightmare, especially on a live show, and tanked with the crowd and the audience at home. Ratings didnt improve, and the angle was scuppered three weeks afterwards when it became clear that they were just handing money away with no promotional upside. This being the WWF, of course, a simple phasing out of the storyline wouldnt do. Why, that would make it seem as though McMahon had made a terrible, grandiose mistake. No, they chose to write McMahon off television by having part of the stage set-up collapse upon him, and by having him carted off to hospital. Yes, thats right: a storyline so bad that the only participant chose to fake his own near death in an incredibly dodgy and expensive stunt in order to stop having to do it every week. Nobody knows why Million Dollar Mania was greenlit in the first place, or how it lasted as long as it did. Nobody knows what it was supposed to accomplish, or why McMahon had so little faith in his own professional wrestling promotion to garner ratings that he felt the need to give vast sums of money away to improve matters. Nobody knows.