6 Insanely Tone-Deaf Ways The WWE Addressed Serious Issues

When the ceremony came, the fans booed furiously. It was as if their boos had been training their entire lives for this one moment. When the reverend asked if there were any objections, the WWE's resident pimp tried to lure the men back to heterosexuality with the promise of lady parts. As if that wasn't stupid enough, Chuck and Billy then brought the ceremony to an end, revealing their whole gay relationship had been a publicity stunt.

And they weren't done. The reverend ripped his face off to reveal he was the evil Eric Bischoff the whole time! Wait, what?

Now unmasked for no real reason, Bischoff invited his goons down to the ring to destroy everybody. So, to be clear, the fake gay wedding endorsed and advised by GLAAD ended up being mostly conversion therapy before it became a joke, a trick, and a fistfight. GLAAD was pissed, and rightfully so. They severed their relationship with the WWE.

A decade later, GLAAD and the WWE mended ties. Unfortunately, less than a week after that, commentator Michael Cole called a co-worker a homophobic slur on Twitter and John Cena cut an insulting promo insinuating that The Rock was gay.

But the writers ran into a problem. Their roster is filled with titanic, larger-than-life characters, made that way by carefully constructed storylines and carefully administered steroids. They would look pretty weak losing to 80 pounds of plucky spirit but mostly torso. So Gowen lost. To everyone. And, as it turned out, watching a man with a disability being repeatedly smashed into a puddle made people uncomfortable.

When Brock Lesnar threw Gowen down a flight of stairs while he was in a wheelchair, it was so messed up they cut it from the program when it was rebroadcast in the U.K.

Gowen's WWE career ended with a whimper less than a year after it began. There was no victorious endgame -- he was simply manhandled by larger, more-legged men until he was fired. It ended up being about as inspirational as a pizza restaurant going public with its hatred of gay people.

Luckily, a short time later the WWE tackled disability in a more mature way. With a man named Eugene.

Eugene was a character played by wrestler Nick Dinsmore that was meant to be mentally disabled. Not slow or punchy or dingy -- Eugene was fully mis-chromosomed. He couldn't dress himself, carried teddy bears, and was not capable of understanding things like boners or physical assault. As a concept, it was easily 30 years too late and nearly everyone's reaction to Eugene was some variation of, "I can't fucking believe they're doing this."

This was a show that began every broadcast with a disclaimer to "not try this at home," and they introduced a character with the mind of a child who defeated bullies by copying the moves of his favorite wrestlers. And the thing about wrestling is that it's hard to get a grip on the unironic. It's all a weird combination of silliness, stupidity, theater, and actual danger being run by people who have proven to be legitimately out-of-touch and crazy. So, while Eugene was a lovable character, it was hard to know if his bosses meant him to be a comment on political correctness or a, you know, super funny retard joke. So the fans turned on the concept. It led to uncomfortable scenes where thousands of people cheered for the bad guys as they pummeled poor, helpless Eugene.

Eugene was finally retired as a character in 2007, a mere three years after no living person could believe it was a thing they were actually still doing.

But in the late '90s, during the height of the wrestling boom, WWE decided to address the issue of racism within the company. Ron Simmons was the first black champion in WCW history, and after he jumped ship to WWE he was eager to become the first black champion there as well. He founded the Nation Of Domination -- a group loosely based on the Nation Of Islam -- to help him further his goals.

The Nation Of Domination wanted to end racism in professional wrestling and for black performers to get championship opportunities. Those seem like noble goals, right? The problem was that these were the bad guys. Which meant their enemies, the "good guys" were literally fighting to keep the black man down.

After their locker room was vandalized with racist slurs, McMahon still acted like they were out of line to say there was racism in the company. In one famous comedy segment, the rival group D-Generation X came down to the ring in blackface to make fun of them. Blackface. In 1998. And here's what's crazy: Fans loved it.

Finally, white guys have a voice.

So, did the Nation Of Domination achieve its goals? Actually, one of the group's members would go on to become champion: a half-Samoan, half-black wrestler known as The Rock. He seemed to fall completely off the map after that, though.

Aside from Rock, there has been no other black WWE champion in the company's history. And while counting the lack of somethings is usually an irresponsible way to judge something's racism, the number of black wrestlers stuck playing stereotypes like street thugs, jive dancers, and gospel singers proves it's still a problem. Which means the WWE had its own civil rights movement it scripted itself, and in it the black man still lost.

The company still heralds it as one of their proudest moments, but many at the time felt it wasn't their place. No one should start their 9/11 speech with, "You might know me as the guy who hit a woman with a chair to cheat my way to the Intercontinental Title. And tonight I'm here to help put a national tragedy into perspective."

Throughout the show, wrestlers gave their thoughts on the tragedy in pre-taped interviews. And as it was for everyone in the country, it was a random flailing of unprocessed shock and emotions mixed with uncharacteristic reverence. A nice way to put it is that nobody had anything particularly insightful to say. At least until Stephanie McMahon's interview.

Stephanie told the world that when her family was under attack, it only made them stronger, and America would now be made stronger too. Oh, and to be clear, the "attack" on her family she's talking about was her father's trial for steroid distribution. The interview was removed from reruns of the show, as it made Vince's daughter look like a self-absorbed moron. Comparing your dad's steroid abuse to 9/11 would be insulting even in a world where he was drug-free. Oh, and to be clear again:

The WWE's 9/11 commentary didn't stop there. In 2004, WWE pushed a character named Muhammad Hassan. He and his manager, Daivari, were villains who hated Americans, but it wasn't as dumb as you think. They hated Americans because they had spent the last few years being treated like crap because of the color of their skin. They had justified criticism of how Arab-Americans were treated post-9/11 and were surprisingly nuanced villains. Right up until they weren't ...

Very quickly, Hassan's character became a terrorist caricature. In one misguided segment, Daivari went into a suicide match against the Undertaker and Hassan did some kind of prayer ritual to summon five masked men -- it was kind of bizarre. The writers may have mixed up witchcraft with Islam, but religious inaccuracy wasn't really the problem. The problem was it going on the air on the day of the London bombings.

"While the world recovers from this unspeakable act of terror, please enjoy this childish skit about ...
well, magic terrorists cheating in a fight against a zombie. We ... shit, we shouldn't have done this."

Thus, Road Warrior Hawk's real-life problems with alcohol were implemented into his storylines in 1998. He'd collapse drunk outside the ring, and it created friction between him and his tag team partner, Animal. Alcoholism is one of those things that can be treated lightheartedly right up until you run into someone suffering from it. And since Hawk did suffer from it, he carried that fun-ruining context around with him every time the WWE tried to turn it into a wacky pro-wrestling storyline.

The point is, he didn't appreciate having his personal demons aired in public, at least not in a campy medium that punctuates dramatic beats with blows to the head with a folding chair. The drama finally concluded when he climbed on top of the big screen and tried to commit suicide. Another wrestler climbed up after him to talk him down, but inevitably pushed him off instead, because wrestling. Both Hawk and Animal quit as a result of the story.

Having to endure "oh, what a lush" jokes every damn day probably didn't help, either.

A decade later, the WWE decided to approach addiction from a different angle in a feud between CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Punk is famous for living a drug-free lifestyle. Hardy is famous for being high as balls for much of his career. He's been fired from two wrestling companies and once turned up for a championship match in such a wretched condition that they had to cancel it immediately after it started. So how did WWE mess this story up? They ... kind of made it seem like the addict was the hero.

The feud was promoted as Punk's drug-free lifestyle versus Hardy's "living in the moment," but Hardy seemed so proud of his destructive behavior it started to feel like cheering for him was endorsing drug abuse. When Punk bragged that he had never been to rehab, Hardy triumphantly retorted that he had never been to rehab either -- he handled his problems by himself. If he was expecting cheers, he was disappointed. If there's one thing no one thinks is cute, it's addicts bragging about how they don't need rehab. Try it for yourself at home!

Punk eventually beat Hardy in a match that forced him to quit -- a storyline designed to give Jeff some time off to rest. Unfortunately, this also gave him time off for his "living in the moment," and he was shortly arrested on charges of prescription drug trafficking and possession. The moral of our story is this: When casting the part of a junkie wrestler, you don't necessarily have to use one who is an actual addict. That's what acting is for! Otherwise fans see the guy getting put in cuffs on the news and think, "Man, that dude never breaks character!"

We've talked before about the tragically shortened life expectancy of professional wrestlers. So it's only natural that the WWE should try to address some of these deaths in their programming. But they were handled as clumsily as Sid Vicious trying to stammer through a promo.

When Eddie Guerrero died in 2005 of heart failure, the WWE held two tribute shows to honor his memory. In a series of interviews, his friends and colleagues paid their respects. It was all genuinely moving, but things unfortunately did not stop there.

Eddie's friend, Rey Mysterio, vowed to win the World Heavyweight Championship and dedicate it to Eddie's memory. It was pretty cheap for the company to use a performer's death to promote a storyline, but it was even cheaper when Rey's enemies started mocking the recently departed to rile up the crowd. For example, Randy Orton claimed Eddie was burning in Hell. Again: This guy died in real life.

This wasn't just offensive to the fans, either. Imagine being a performer and finding out you were supposed to go out and mock your actual dead friend in front of the world.

But if Guerrero's demise was handled poorly, Paul Bearer's was a total shitshow. Bearer was the manager of the Undertaker (get it? "Paul Bearer"?) and controlled the undead wrestler with a magic urn. The character survived being buried alive in cement, but in 2013, William Alvin Moody, the guy who played him, died of a heart attack.

Undertaker paid tribute to Paul Bearer on live television but was attacked by CM Punk. Punk stole Bearer's urn and mocked him relentlessly over the following weeks. In one infamous segment, Punk's manager impersonated Bearer before Punk dumped the urn on the Undertaker and smeared the ashes across his face. Viewers flipped. So, if you were wondering where the line is for wrestling fans, there you go: It's rubbing human remains on another wrestler's face while they're still warm. Well, and the gay marriage thing.

If Billy and Chuck had rubbed ashes on each other's faces instead of exchanging vows,
it would've been mass riots.

It's the same problem as with the addiction storylines, only magnified times 10. A wrestling storyline based around an actual dead person is like stabbing someone during a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It's a broken, confusing mix of fantasy and reality. But WWE fans should be used to it by now. After all, this is the same company that once aired a segment where Big Boss Man crashed the funeral of Big Show's father, hitched the casket to the back of his car, and dragged it and the hysterical, grieving son into comical funeral history.

Thanks to Ed Stevens for his contributions to this article. Steve Hanley is a writer and, sadly, still a wrestling fan. You can follow him on Twitter if you like.

For more on wrestling from Cracked, check out The 5 Greatest Unscripted Disasters in Pro Wrestling and 5 Things We're Begging to See Changed in Pro Wrestling.

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