(From right to left: Helmsley, Nash, Michaels, Hall)
On May 19th, 1996 a hole was superkicked into the once veiled world of professional wrestling. In my last entry, I described the large amounts of effort that went into protecting the sanctity of the fictitious aspects of Kayfabe. Today’s entry surrounds a group of four wrestlers that exposed the innerworkings of the business in the center of one of the world’s biggest stages, Madison Square Garden. The four wrestlers involved were Sean Michaels, Hunter Hearst Helmsley also known as Triple H, Scott Hall also known as Razor Ramon, and Kevin Nash also known as Diesel. Backstage this group was known as the Kliq and had a large amount of influence over their own careers as well as the careers of the other wrestlers working for their company at the time. Their company being the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), now referred to as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
At this point in time, wrestling had grown into a national phenomenon with the assistance of cable television. Weekly episodes received around five million views on average and served as advertisements to profitable “house” shows that weren’t to be televised. This fiasco took place at a house show with an attendance of tens of thousands of people. Two of the members of the Kliq, (Hall and Nash) were set to leave the WWF for a rival wrestling company and the bookers had paired them against the other two members of the group (Michaels and Helmsley) as a cheeky way of saying goodbye. More specifically, it was Hall that faced Helmsley first and Michaels that went up against Nash in a much anticipated steel cage match later on in the night.
As soon as they finished and Shawn got his hand raised in the air, Scott Hall walked into the cage for a hug. Fans were confused about his actions considering they had just seen him lose his match a few minutes ago and no idea that he was set to leave. Things got even more befuddling when Helmsley entered the ring to join the hug as well. He was a heel for Pete’s sake! Not only that, but he was the same heel that beat the crap out of the guy he was hugging now. To make matters even worse, Michaels resuscitated Nash, his opponent, with a kiss straight out of the pages of Snow White. The four men continued to hug in the middle of the stage as baffled fans cheered and the company bookers kicked bricks backstage. They were furious. It was found out that a member of the audience had snuck a camcorder into the venue and recorded the whole celebration. The video he took was uploaded to the internet and just like that, the secret was out.
The owner of the WWF, Vince McMahon decided someone needed to be punished for what happened. Hall and Nash had already left the company, so it couldn’t be them. Shawn Michaels was the lovable babyface champion and it was already hard enough to keep his drug abuse issues at bay. This meant that all of the heat was left to Hunter Hearst Helmsley. I’ll discuss this more in my next entry about the rise of Triple H.
Wow! Your posts are almost straight out of a novel about professional wrestling! You could seriously be a writer 🙂
This is fascinating, and a completely new world to me; I am so excited for your next post (I love how you leave on a cliffhanger!).
I totally agree with Marina when she said that this is “a completely new world.” Your tone sounds so knowledgeable and passionate and you do a great job of thoroughly describing the world of professional wrestling. I’m excited to see what your future posts have in store! Great work!
I love how every passion post leaves you with a hint about what will happen next. Honestly, I wasn’t sure about WWE before your blog, but you have really gotten me very interested in it! You’re writing is fantastic and the style is very conversational yet informative. Definitely NOT a boring read. Awesome!