Nine out of ten times, if something makes it to television, it's fake - no matter how real it seems. Fans know it, but promoters still love to book "worked shoots" - storylines and angles that make reference to real-life events and are supposed to be taken as legitimate, as opposed to the rest of the programs on the show. Needless to say, that logical fallacy causes problems. Vince Russo has always been a huge fan of booking worked shoots, and one of his most infamous ideas came at the New Blood Rising Pay-Per-View event. Goldberg - who had turned heel a couple of months earlier - was placed into a three way match with Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner for number one contendership to the WCW Title. During the bout, Nash set Goldberg up for the Jackknife Powerbomb, but Goldberg simply shoved him away and left the ring. As the announcers crowed that Goldberg was no longer following the script, Russo came from the back and began yelling at the star to return to the ring. Goldberg simply flipped him off and walked to the back. Things got worse. Russo forced Goldberg to face Steiner in a match at Fall Brawl, and it was billed as real - literally real. Promos for the match announced that Goldberg walked out on the script at New Blood Rising, but at Fall Brawl, there would be no script. Again, this made it to TV, so it was all part of a ridiculous storyline, but the extent to which it exposed wrestling was ridiculous.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
