8 Disturbing WWE Raw Moments You Totally Don't Remember
1. I Don't Even Know Where To Begin (13 September 2004)
In spring 2004, Kane and Lita took part in one of the most weirdly disturbing storylines in wrestling history, as part of a messed-up 'romantic' storyline that lasted for over a year and took in Matt Hardy, barely consensual sex following threats of violence and a kidnapping, a child resulting from that horror story of a union, and a shotgun wedding that broke all the rules of pro wrestling weddings.
The headline to this is accurate, as I genuinely don't know where to start. I could go on for ages about how the babyface Lita was originally presented and promoted as what Amy Dumas actually is in real life: a highly individual, focused and motivated punk rock pro wrestler with a reckless streak a mile wide, a role model to young girls (just ask seventeen-year-old April Jeanette Mendez). Lita was an iconoclast who'd competed against men in the ring, a formative member of Team Extreme. Reducing her to the level of helpless damsel in distress (and worse, a victim) was terrible characterisation, godawful marketing and just plain sh*tty storytelling - quite apart from being misogynist and grotesque.
Being forced to marry her abuser was one thing, of course: having the whole storyline play out as it did, with her boyfriend Hardy and Lita herself powerless to do anything about any of it was f*cked up on a variety of levels. Kane was essentially playing a stalker and a rapist: how he got to come out on top of the feud is beyond me. Who benefits from that? Who gets over? Who's paying for tickets to see a six foot nine serial killer beat, humiliate and molest a feminist icon on national television with no comeback and no comeuppance?
The ending to the pregnancy angle was, of course, a miscarriage, caused by jobber Gene Snitsky. Setting aside for a moment that miscarriage angles are almost uniformly tasteless, the fact of the loss of his unborn child then magically turned the genuine monster heel Kane babyface. In one of the most baffling alignment shifts of all time, Kane and Lita were from then on presented as being on the same side... and as being in a normal genuine married relationship.
Astonishingly, that meant that when Lita finally turned on Kane, getting with Edge and revoking their marriage, she did so by turning heel on the man that kidnapped her, destroyed her will, serially abused her for months, hospitalised her boyfriend and made her life a living hell. That guy remained a babyface. She became a villain for leaving him. What the actual hell, WWE?