The WORST Wrestling Moment Every Year (1989 - 2025)
27. 1999 | Terri’s Fake Miscarriage
The Higher Power reveal is the obvious pick, and not for nothing.
To make sense of the development, you have to erase about half a year’s worth of storylines. Basically, the Undertaker wanted to take over the WWF, alongside his Ministry of Darkness, and revealed that he needed to marry Stephanie McMahon in a ‘Black Wedding’ to usher in this new “plague of evil”. Vince threw various members of his own heel group, the Corporation, at ‘Taker. ‘Taker throughout this saga spoke of a Higher Power. It was revealed to be Vince, who had seemingly orchestrated a long, sprawling ruse of a storyline purely to fool and further torment Steve Austin. The whole thing was braindead nonsense. McMahon owned the bastard company. He was definitionally the highest power imaginable before any of this crap started turtling.
As terrible and corny and dumber than pointless as all this was, it was over. The ratings during this period were mental. Also, the reveal promo endures in the pro wrestling lexicon. JR’s “Aw, son of a bitch!” response is as memorable as his calls at King Of The Ring 1998.
Unfortunately, Mr. McMahon was such a brilliant TV performer during the Attitude Era that even his worst stuff - hell, wrestling’s worst stuff - was iconic.
The award instead goes to Vince Russo booking a fake miscarriage angle. Terri pretended that she was pregnant in a presumed bid to “trap” Val Venis, before pretending that D’Lo Brown caused her to miscarry, resulting in him doing her bidding.
Terri’s faction was the ‘Pretty Mean Sisters’. Between the name and their storyline, this was Russo basically saying “women are emotionally hysterical whores and manipulative liars”.