10 Most Infamous WWE Ruthless Aggression Era Controversies

We all talk about the madness WWE got up to during the Attitude Era, but what about the time we moved forward and enjoyed Ruthless Aggression

Widely regarded as the next phase, you would think things switched around to establish that we were moving on to past as new

Nope, and in fact, some of what we did was even more nuts. So please do brace yourself, my friends, because yeah, this is the 10 most infamous WWE Ruthless Aggression Era controversies

Number 10, The Billy and Chuck Wedding. This should have been a moment in time

It would have been better if we did it with two homosexual men to underline that it's perfectly fine for two males to be in love and get married, but this is what we had

If nothing else, it would be a fine message to send out to an audience. And then WWE went the other way entirely

For those that don't know, Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo did join forces in November 2001, with the idea being there was every chance they were gay

This was heavily insinuated without being outright said, but to get this across, they were overly flamboyant and wore pink

I mean, that was silly. We don't need to lean on stereotypes. The thing is, the company even reached out to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation

to consult on this storyline, so there was a little bit of confidence. Maybe this was going to be a proper finger flip to bigots across the land

GLAAD, as they're also known, admitted that WWE had promised to air the Billy and Chuck wedding too

which really did have some intrigue behind it, when we flipped that switch

Because even though for weeks we did advertise that they were going to tie the knot, It turned out this was a publicity stunt, with Billy being scripted to say

we're not gay, as if this was a terrible thing, it is really not cool at all

Thankfully, we would never do this sort of thing today, but here's the kicker. We shouldn't have been doing it then either

Number nine, the Katie Vick angle. I mean, where on earth do I begin

If you know you can just stare off into the distance for a while and cry, and if you don't, well, I suppose I'm going to have to tell you

Make sure you're sitting down. In the fall of 2002, we learned that Kane had killed a woman

This was after Triple H had accused him of being a murderer on Raw, and in a bid to explain himself

the big red machine admitted his pal Katie Vick was dead, but it was because he was driving her car that he wasn't used to and crashed

He survived, she was dead, what on earth are we doing? Hunter then pushed this boat out by telling Kane he had been drinking behind the wheel

and that's why it happened, and that when doctors did an autopsy, they found the masked man's semen in her body

I am not making any of this up This then turned into some awful unrequited love storyline

To try and get one over Kane Triple H did indeed sneak into a funeral parlor

And pretended to hump a corpse I don't know how else to explain it

The absolute worst bit being this was a real place With an actual funeral going on in the next room

The vision of Trips doing this is burned into anybody's brain Who watched it live

And I tell ya I took a break from wrestling after this You will be stunned to hear I had no interest

watching a man have fake sex with a mannequin that was meant to be a deceased human I mean who the hell could have ever have called that one Number eight Muhammad Hassan We are getting into it now and I crying again It just a question of taste mostly

although once again, WWE actually acted like they had a nuanced idea at the start of this

The world had become a very worrying place after the 9-11 attacks, and the racism aimed at many Arab Americans was terrible

Therefore, why not have a character that calls out the nation for this stance, and how it has to change

Yeah, cool. Right, I get that. Shine a mirror onto people's biases

and let's see if we can't craft a very deep storyline. The problem as ever is that it is wrestling

so within weeks, Muhammad Hassan, who had been invented to carry this idea, was turned into the worst of all stereotypes

There's that word again. While Hassan was meant to be received as a persecuted figure

WWE were soon going back to the old foreign menish tropes, with the absolute worst part being

number seven, the worst angle ever. That's right, we bookend all of this because it feels like they deserve their own entries

and once again, I'll do my best to explain. Come 2005, the Hassan gimmick was full-on controversial and in bad taste

with nationalism and patriotism taking centre stage. Vince McMahon then decided The Undertaker would be a great opponent for Muhammad to defend America

when Hassan and a group of masked men turned up on Smackdown and beat up the phenom

and it was made out like it was a terrorist attack. Now, this would have been horrendous anyway

but the real shock to the system is the fact this happened just days after the London bombings

We are now talking next-level offensive. The backlash was loud and angry as it should have been, and unsurprisingly, TV network UPN told the company to get this off the show instantly

I think at this stage, even WWE realized they screwed up, and poor Mark Capone, who had been cast in this role, never wrestled again

It wasn't his fault, it was just doing what he was told. Either way, though, this was bottom-of-the-barrel nonsense

Number 6, Triple H vs. Booker T. It's already fair to say that Booker T has spoken out about this angle, and he gets to have the final say on this matter

He was in it, it was his story. so anything that comes out of my mouth moves into a lesser position

If we are talking about moments that left people reeling though, you do have to throw it in there

And the major reason for this was because WWE decided to make it about race

Yep, I'm not going to get into how they approached this because as ever there was no nuance to it

And instead we had lines that were meant to sound like Triple H and Ric Flair thinking a black man shouldn't be in the position of a world champion

It really was quite astonishing. To try and give some back and forth to this, Bruce Prichard said on his podcast this was designed to bury WCW

but if that's the case, I'm not sure why we throw in lines like nappy hair

That to me feels abusive and rude. There's also the frequent use of the term you people

which turns my stomach to be honest, but I tell ya. Even if this is what WWE wanted to do

there would have been a perfect out when we got to WrestleMania 19 and Booker T just whipped the game's ass

You're damn right. Teach the world that you can't be prejudiced without serious consequences

And then we got to that day and Triple H won. Ah, no

Even right now I don get why we did this other than silly backstage politics Because even if you do get rid of all of the above at wrestlemania just have the good guy go over this wasn cool this wasn cool at all number five the eddie guerrero

exploitation once again i want to make it clear that people like ray mysterio have spoken out

about this they get the final say we were just the watchers as a fan viewing this though it did

feel very uncomfortable after the tragic passing of eddie guerrero in november 2005 mostly because

we kept on going back to it. I don't think anybody minded Rey Mysterio winning the 2006

Royal Rumble and dedicating it to Latino Heat. That was emotionally heartbreaking

but it was the other side that raised eyebrows. For example, given that Randy Orton was feuding

with Mysterio at the time, he was scripted to say that Eddie was in hell. I mean, I now feel

rotten having to repeat that, and let's be fair to Randy too, he told everyone backstage he didn't

think this was right. What could he do? I suppose the best way to underline it is that we went too

far into almost using Guerrero's passing to sell stories as opposed as having them as a loving

tribute and sure maybe Eddie would have wanted this which was the constant defense but many fans

still felt like it was in bad taste they didn't want to see it either way the real sore spot was

even though it was there to send Ray to the moon WWE never really pushed him properly and even when

he was the champion it was something of a damp squib just got beaten over and over again not

really the greatest idea when you're fighting for the memory of a friend who is no longer with us

Number four, the JBL character. Let's get it straight before we go on

JBL was a heat magnet. In 2004, I don't think anyone thought the former Bradshaw had this in him

but he made the necessary changes and became an awesome bad guy world champion on SmackDown

People hated him. When you jumped into the internet discussion, however, the controversy came in the fact that WWE had literally taken him from the APA

and made him the guy from nowhere. That is true. And if you need an up-to-date version of this, it would be Jinder Mahal

Just one day woke up and boop, the guy who had been presented to us as no threat

all of a sudden had a major title. It was jarring. I think the main reason JBL gets in here is because of the direction we went in

As he was feuding with Eddie Guerrero, Bradshaw headed to the Mexican border

and basically shouted about immigrants in the most racist way possible. If you were indeed Latino yourself, this probably left your jaw on the floor

Kurt Angle addressed this on his podcast too and said something similar. He felt like Eddie could have spoken to management about this

but instead saw Guerrero use it to his advantage to get as much sympathy as possible

Again, though, maybe we just stay away from this stuff. There really is no need

Number three, Dr. Heine. Oh, no. Let me just tell you the truth

Vince McMahon loved taking shots at Jim Ross on air. I don't know why

Fans don't know why. Not even JR knows why. He has spoken about this on his podcast

It just feels unnecessary and sometimes mean. It is a testament to Jim that he was able to basically shake this off and carry on regardless

But in 2005, when Ross underwent a colonoscopy, McMahon thought it was so funny he was going to do a routine on Raw Now I don know about you but even before anything else I don want my boss telling people that I just had a colonoscopy This is The skit itself was just bonkers too as Vince dressed up as Dr Heine

before telling his scantily clad nurse friend to start removing massive objects out of JR's ass

I'm not even kidding. This went on for about 20 minutes. So not only did Ross have to sit through that, but his friends saw it, his family saw it

and if you were a fan tuning in, you got it too. Bruce Pritchard again has defended this, saying it was done out of love and respect

but I defer to Jim's late wife on this one. By all accounts, she was in tears after this, so once again, just don't do it

Number two, the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide. I do not like talking about this

Maybe that makes me a coward, but it is up there as one of the worst moments in wrestling history

and another time where I just stopped watching for a while. Sports entertainment didn't feel that fun anymore

It does feel important to keep the conversation going out of respect for Nancy Benoit and son Daniel though

because if nothing else, their memory should not be forgotten. Nancy too had an incredible career in pro wrestling, deserves to have a spotlight shone on it

Nothing created as much controversy as this though, as it went far outside the world of wrestling

Major news outlets everywhere were covering it, which soon turned into an accusation of steroid juice, CTE and all manner of issues

It was just horrendous. In case you don't know, the headlines are that Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son

before taking his own life, and ever since, the story has unraveled. The amount of drugs Chris was taking, the damage to his brain

the grief he had over the death of best friend Eddie Guerrero. I am certainly not saying any of these are excuses

It was just a narrative that continued to grow and expand. As the response to any mention of this is always

that he should still go into the Hall of Fame, I would just like to say, that is a mad reply

No matter what you did within a wrestling ring, it pales in comparison to such a needless and shocking tragedy

It shouldn't, and will never happen. Number one, the sad amount of deaths

This is the reason that modern day wrestling wins. Even if you think it was better way back when

during the ruthless aggression era especially, so many stars passed away too young

it almost became the norm. That should never be the case. A lot of it was due to the drug use that was prevalent at the time

which was one of the reasons Eddie Guerrero passed away. He had cleaned himself up by 2005

but ultimately the damage he had done to his body was way too much. Kurt Henning was another, as was the likes of Crash Holly, Tenson, Lance Cade

but it was the statistics that really got people. The average life expectancy of a pro wrestler

who starred in the United States across the 18s and 90s was below any other occupation in the land

As of 2015, the mortality rate was 2.9 times greater than the wider male population

Now we all know that wrestling is an incredibly hard industry that there's a number of those within it

but this was just too much. That's why it's so important we did clean things up

and when you look at it today, yeah, it all seems much better and healthier

you can't put a price on that. If you did enjoy that too, you will see that a video has just popped up

for 10 times wrestling heels with secretly the baby face, which will be much more fun than this list

But thanks for watching and goodbye