I select one of the most uncomfortable segments that I can remember witnessing on WWF/WWE TV, Vince McMahon forces Trish Stratus to crawl around, bark like a dog, and undress.

On the 2/26/01 Raw, a tag team match was set up in which Vince McMahon was to tag with Trish Stratus to face William Regal & Stephanie McMahon. Vince ended up swerving Trish and pouring a slop bucket all over her. The following week, on the 3/5/01 Raw, Trish comes out to address what had happened, and surprises everyone by crying and saying that she's sorry and that she deserved what happened to her. Vince says that he doesn't believe her, and forces her to prove how sorry she is. He tells her that if she's really sorry, she'll get down on all fours (a position, he adds, that he's seen her in before) like a dog and bark for him. He continues, "I used to have a female dog, and that ***** did everything I told her to do." Trish obliges, crawls around on her hands and knees and then, through tears, barks into a microphone multiple times.



Vince goes on to say that he still isn't convinced that she's really sorry. He tells her that if she's really sorry, she'll take her clothes off. She absolutely does not want to, but she goes along with this as well, first shedding her jacket. He specifically demands that she take her top off. And then her skirt. She goes along with those things as well. He continues on to demand that she take her bra off, and she's seemingly going to, but then he stops her and sends her away instead.

Obviously I know what the counterpoint is against this being an awful segment: Mr. McMahon was a heel in abusing this woman, and it was presented as heel activity, as Jim Ross acted disgusted on commentary throughout the segment. But to me it still crossed a line of bad taste, and I'm really not usually the type to moralize about what gets aired during the course of a wrestling product. I think that the biggest problem is that, no matter the fact that it was presented as heelish, when Trish is unwillingly shedding her clothes, obviously the dudes in the crowd are cheering wildly for Vince as he leverages his authority to force her into doing this. And that was a totally foreseeable crowd reaction…obviously you can't count on a bunch of young male wrestling fans to boo that particular sequence. Well, they booed the part where he let up and let her leave without further degradation, but that's part of the point.

In the end, the whole thing felt gross and over the line, and to me it's certainly the type of thing that the company would get massive heat over today, with good reason.

Draft:
Fingerpoke of Doom
Giant falls off roof, then immediately wrestles without explanation
Gobbledygooker
Undertaker murders Big Boss Man
Big Boss Man/Big Show feud
The Renegade Bait-and-Switch
Vince Degrades Trish

I remember him being pretty good on American Gladiators and his hiring by WWE made mainstream news. It all seemed like a good idea. Then he actually got on camera and ****ed up his very first sentence, famously calling Jeff Hardy "Jeff Harvey".

He would later make many more mistakes as he replaced Joey Styles on WWECW. Here is a sampling:


He would only last 10 months.

PS: As I was looking for that clip, I found out that earlier this year he was diagnosed with CTE-related dementia stemming from his football days. I feel a little bad picking this now.

Ed Ferrara as "Oklahoma"

With the way Vince Russo left the WWF basically in the dead of night, you had to figure that there were probably some WWF employees that Russo held a grudge against, felt treated him unfairly, or just outright hated. While subsequent shoot interviews have uncovered several of those names, there was one name that you didn't need to be a detective to figure out pretty much immediately after they jumped.

Jim Ross.

JR, of course, was VP of Talent Relations in the Attitude Era, and held a fair amount of sway with Vince McMahon. And presumably, he would've had the ability to tell Russo no from time to time when he was head writer. Whatever happened there, Russo left the WWF with a big chip on his shoulder, and since WCW was letting him do whatever he wanted, he took advantage to air his petty grievances.

Which is how we ended up with this (not the greatest video quality):



Yes, they devoted an entire segment to mocking a beloved announcer that happened to work for the competition (not to mention Mexican wrestlers). Yes, they did manage to convince/coerce/pay off/bribe/blackmail JR's close friend, "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, to take part.

And yes, they did make fun of a man's physical disability on national TV to settle a petty grudge.

I've had Bell's Palsy myself, and the morning I woke up with it scared me like nothing else before or since. I wanted to beat the **** out of Ferrara for this, and not in the "Ted DiBiase kicks the basketball away" kind of way.

And, of course, since this was Russo we were talking about, they beat this unfunny joke into the ground for weeks, with the absolute nadir being this result at Souled Out 2000:

Forget it, Jake. It's 2000 WCW.