One MIND-BLOWING Secret From Every WWE Royal Rumble

2001 - An Ironic Note On The Prior Year’s Controversy

Going back in time a year, Royal Rumble 2000 was a fairly insane show even by Attitude Era standards. Tables were destroyed. Blood was spilled. Octogenarian women pretended to get their knockers out.

This was par for the course stateside, but this stuff incensed higher-ups at Channel 4 - a British station carrying a pay-per-view for the very first time. Given that they really should have expected this, since they ordered it, it must be inferred that someone of influence had heard wrestling was popular again, thought “The fake stuff with Hulk Hogan?”, and commissioned it - only to be confronted by Mae Young’s prosthetic hip-ticklers.

For the remainder of the deal, which as you can imagine was not very long, Channel 4 aired every subsequent PPV event on 50 minute tape delay, allowing editors to digitise blood and cut out any offending material. This was the case when the station broadcast Royal Rumble 2001 - with quite incredible hypocrisy.

UK fans thought this entire thing was odd, since Channel 4 was practically defined by its risque late-night fare, which was swarming with breasts. Even the signature breakfast show was rimming - sorry, brimming - with innuendo. And it was odd, because the show aired before Royal Rumble was a documentary premised on the dangers of binge drinking (or rather, a thinly-veiled excuse to screen fights and young people in states of undress). You could see bare breasts and everything.

So Mae Young’s fake nipples = bad, real nipples = spiffing.

Channel 4 explained the decision by claiming younger fans were more likely to tape the Royal Rumble.