One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY Month Of The WWE Attitude Era
23. June 1999 | The WWF Negotiated With WHO?!
Shane Douglas was a complete physical wreck by 1999. Hell, he was a complete physical wreck by 1998, during which he missed months of action as ECW World champion. Even travelling to the site of Wrestlepalooza ‘98 was agonising for him, and his condition was so apparent that Paul Heyman could not ignore it. He played up to it in the build, even though it was not ideal that the heel garnered sympathy. Shane Douglas Vs. Al Snow was a grim main event, Heroes Of Wrestling one year early. It took far longer than it should have, but Douglas dropped the belt to Taz at Guilty As Charged 1999. He quit in May after an ill-fated babyface turn. His prospects looked bleak.
He wasn’t just a wreck; the shoot-style promo he effectively pioneered had become wrestling’s native tongue. ‘The Game’ was almost a synonym of ‘The Franchise’. Douglas, once a promo God, had nothing left to say because everybody else was saying it.
Despite all of this - and despite a gigantic failure of a WWF run under the Dean Douglas gimmick in 1995 - Shane held talks with the Fed in mid-1999, per the June 14 Observer. Meltzer stresses that this involved just one meeting. An offer was made, subject to a thorough physical examination, but it couldn’t have been very lucrative; Shane countered with a request for $350,000, which the WWF noped.
In a potentially funny scenario, he might have leveraged this offer to get that shocking run with WCW; he went there very soon after these reports leaked, despite Kevin Nash “not wanting him around”.