I used to be a wrestling fan during the 80s and into the late 90s. But by 2001 I started to tune out once I found out that Vince McMahon was buying WCW and later ECW.
These days I tune in once in a while just to see what they're up to at WWE (formerly WWF), but I tuned in last week to learn that Vince McMahon had died in a car explosion. I see wrestlers giving their personal regards to Vince and they all had sad looks on their faces. Of course his "death" (in such as tramedic way) wasn't in the news media, no one was commenting on it. I said to myself, heh, another tasteless storyline by the WWE. So I tuned in today/yesterday to see an empty arena with just Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler with (yet again) looking as depressed as ever. I actually thought the empty arena was apart of the storyline of Vince McMahon's so-called "death", but I'm watching and I see Chris Benoit in a match with "The Big Show" and then I see"Royal Rumble" as the event and I thought that was odd because Royal Rumble was usually held in January.
During the match I see a little pop-up on the bottom of the screen of Chris Benoit, his wife, and son. And it said how he and his family died but it didn't say anything else.
So this even "sadder" tribute wasn't for Vince after all, but for Chris Benoit. I know people who watch WWE at least once every 2 weeks must have been confused as I was last night. I did a search online to discover that Benoit really did die. But then I went over to a wrestling newsgroup to find out more information on Benoit to discover that the 'Sensational Sherri Martel" had also died 10 days prior of Chris Benoit's death yesterday. Again I was shocked.
In case you didn't know, Sensational Sherri is best known for being Randy "Macho Man" Savage's manager or ring-side helper in the late 80s and early 90s. Ironically, Miss Elisabeth was also Macho Man's manager prior to Sherri... and guess what? Both women have died prematurely. I can't help but assume that the wrestling business (especially WWE) is under some kind of hex. It must be, too many strange deaths over the years, and for the most part, they all were under 50 years old...
And here's something else I've find out from the news... the deaths of the Benoits is being reported as a double-murder suicide.
"Investigators believe the 40-year-old Benoit killed his wife, Nancy, and 7-year-old son, Daniel, over the weekend, then himself on Monday."
The folks at WWE had just made a tribute to a man who might have murdered his family and himself. Unbelievable! Obviously they didn't know this because it was just revealed near midnight, but they should have waited a few days before doing tributes.
But I guess they couldn't wait because Vince McMahon probably felt bad at his fake death storyline and how it backfired on him with the deaths of two wrestling personalities within the same month of his phony storyline and having his workers pay tribute to him, not knowing there will be 2 real deaths in his wrestling business weeks later.
I went over to Alexa.com to learn that "Vince McMahon" was the most searched for keyword in search engines. Great job Vince, now you've got millions of people actually believing that you've actually past away and feeling sorry for your family...
I wonder how they will treat Vince's death when it actually happens?
I remember how the comedian "Red Foxx" would pretend to have a heart attack throughout his career as a joke, and when he grabbed his chest and fell to the floor on the set of his new TV sitcom (in the early 90s) the cast of the show actually thought he was joking until he didn't get back up... how embarrassing for Red Foxx. And it's even more embarrassing for Vince McMahon.
The whole thing is bizarre, and the way TV has become so distasteful it will only get worse. It was not like this 15 years ago (1992), they at least had some class back then.
I've said it once and I'll say it again... the TV sitcom "Married With Children" signaled the moral decline of television... it all started in 1987 and declined from there.
