30 Most INSANE Things Wrestlers Have EVER Said On Live TV
9. "Mr White, That's Not Wise"
In yet another instance of WWE’s misguided attempts at comedy, the infamous Tim White suicide skits somehow began as a serious segment before spiralling into one of the most shockingly tasteless low stakes (!?) storylines in company history.
It all started in December 2005, when SmackDown interviewer Josh Matthews visited a depressed, alcoholic Tim White - the former referee who had supposedly been forced into retirement due to a shoulder injury sustained during a Hell in a Cell match. The segment was meant to hype The Undertaker vs. Randy Orton’s upcoming Cell match at Armageddon, but WWE took things in an appallingly dark direction. With the wrestling industry still reeling from addiction and mental health struggles - particularly following Eddie Guerrero’s real-life passing just a month earlier - WWE had White attempt suicide on screen, pulling the trigger on a shotgun off-camera.
The twist? He missed and only shot himself in the foot.
Rather than drop the angle, WWE doubled down with a series of absurd "comedy" skits. Over the following weeks, White repeatedly tried to kill himself in increasingly ridiculous ways. This included but wasn't limited to ingesting rat poison, drowning in a fish tank, electrocuting himself in a bathtub, suffocating, hanging, gassing, and even hiring a hitman. A panicked Josh Matthews remained at the scene, always there to punctuate the pantomime with "Mr White, that's not wise", as if to imply any of this had been before they started rolling.
After nearly four months, the punchline to the entire angle was White shooting Matthews - oddly the the only person that seemed to care about his plight - at point-blank range.