The Evil History Of Pro Wrestling: TNA Victory Road 2011
You can’t learn to fall off a ladder, but you can mask the pain.
Pro wrestling is, historically, a diabolical business - so much so that the prominent media publication covering it, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, presents an award to determine what is its most repellent incident. This award, the Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic, is voted on annually. Even in today’s cleaner world, in which the average pro wrestler is very professional and the mainstream promoters aren’t anywhere near as brazenly awful as their scummy predecessors, dishonourable mentions are rife.
Highlighting just how pervasively bleak pro wrestling is, the subject covered in this editorial did not win that year’s “prize”. Instead, it was awarded to WWE, for “promoting an anti-bullying campaign despite blatant mistreatment of Jim Ross”.
Beloved, legendary commentator Jim Ross was often bullied onscreen by then-company owner Vince McMahon. Ross, variously, was mocked for his Bell’s Palsy affliction and, in one infamous segment, undergoing colon surgery. The difference this time was that Vince had the gall to launch the Be A Star campaign in parallel. As detached as WWE is from reality at the best of times, this lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy was truly disgusting. It was a worthy winner of a hotly contested award, beating out the decision to proceed with the main event of TNA Victory Road 2011.
Various wrestlers, over the years, have wrestled while under the influence. ‘Man’s Man’ William Regal was a slurring, incoherent mess in the WWF of late 1998. In that same year, Davey Boy Smith was a 24/7 wreck in WCW, out of his mind on such a lethal cocktail that he once, recalling how long he had been wrestling, struggled to find the word “old” after saying “years”. The Sandman was blitzed more than once in ECW.