41 Most Disgusting Promotional Tactics In Wrestling History RANKED

37. 2000 - David Arquette Wins The WCW World Title

Was this even the most disgusting thing WCW did in 2000?

At Slamboree - held in Kansas City’s Kemper Arena, the site of Owen Hart’s tragic death - Mike Awesome threw Kanyon off the top of a triple-decker cage. Kanyon landed on a heavily gimmicked ramp. WCW, for once, got its sh*t together - everybody on the roster was told to work around the landing spot on the night, to not interfere with and potentially damage it - but this stunt in that building was, at a minimum, utterly thoughtless.

Vince Russo was the WWF head writer when Owen died, and head writer for WCW when Kanyon performed the bump. Either the thought didn’t cross Russo’s mind at all - how could you enter that same place and not think of the tragedy? - or it did, and Russo didn’t care. After the fall, on the next Nitro, it was teased that Kanyon might be paralysed. Evoking memories of Droz’s career-ending accident could be considered a “Fool me once…” situation.

You could argue that it was simply WCW, and thus impossible to take seriously - but if the intent was there, hokey execution doesn’t excuse it.

It’s easy to handwave things, 25 years later. The dumb publicity stunt of B-list actor David Arquette winning the World title did piss a lot of people off, and if you were an aspirational wrestling hipster, you’d have thought it a disgrace. But this wasn’t the “end” of anything sacred.

By April 2000, WCW was already a glorified corpse, reaching for a pole with a WWF buyout offer on top of it.