Inspired by the recent Smackdown episode (to be aired Friday), another case of WWE pissing me the fuck off by continously making a mockery of Kane. For those who don't know... and if you don't, you're a fucking blind retarded fuck, I'm probably the biggest Kane fan you'll ever come across. I have, you could say, an obsession about Kane. I even made a 7-tape compilation of every Kane match and moment I have in my collection. Posters of Kane hang in my room, I have Kane dolls standing on my night stand, and every time I play a WWE video game, I always bring Kane to the World Title. If you ever questioned why I like Kane so much... I don't know. It may be due to the fact that watching Kane destroy a couple of jobbers (later recognized as the Hardy Boyz) brought my interest back to WWE after going cold turkey since RassleMania (channel surfing), or it may be a deep homosexual crush I have.

Anyway, that's not the point. People can argue day and night about how stupid Vince McMahon and his band of morons are when it comes to handling his "talent", but in my eyes, no one, ever, has been fucked over, built back up, and fucked over again as Kane.

First, before Glen Jacobs even became Kane, he suffered through the horrible gimmicks of Isaac Yankem (DDS!), and later was made to imitate KEVIN NASH in the Fake Diesel and Razor Ramon angle. Amazingly, he remained in the payroll long enough to be handed a gimmick that was sure to fail... a pyromaniac, retarded, one eyed, burned to hell zombie with mutant powers who was the half brother of the Undertaker. Really, that makes the original Undertaker gimmick seem stupid. But it got over. Why?

1. Despite being in the lower rung of the talent ranking, Glen Jacobs is a good "big man." He doesn't do a lot of "wrestling" or high flying stuff, but he would work a match that fits his style, and occasionally adapt someone elses, by doing rare pescados and jumps from the top rope to the floor.

2. A untouchable monster is a wonderful gimmick. Warrior? Undertaker? Goldberg? All got over by destroying people within minutes (or less) and never selling.

3. His appearences were limited to run ins and beat downs. From his debut in October '97 through WrestleMania XIV, I count only FOUR matches Kane wrestled, and 1 of them was on Raw, lasting about 90 seconds long. The other three were on PPV.

Anyway enough with that, now it's time to bitch.

Scrooge's List of times Kane got fucked over in the WWF....
1. Kane won the World Title in a questionable way from Steve Austin at the 1998 KOTR. What does WWF do with this? They blow the angle off the NEXT NIGHT, instead of holding off for a big PPV show down. What happens to Kane afterwards? He is shunted into a worthless Tag Title run before "joining" his brother and... doing stuff. Then he turned face... and turned heel. And face. And heel. And face... and heel.


2. The Kane vs. X-Pac feud. The perfect blow off happens at Armageddon '99. Kane obliterates X-pac inside of a steel cage. But then the feud continues. FOR FOUR MONTHS. The blow-off? A throw-away match at WrestleMania 2000 that no one even remembers, other than the San Diego Chicken running in for some dancin' with Too Cool.


3. In one of many stupid/thrown together angles, Kane feuds with Chris Jericho. How did it start? Jericho accidently bumped into Kane, spilling a half-cup of coffee on his chest. I will always remember Kane's response "You think this is about coffee?", because the feud really went nowhere when it came to storylines, and it ended with a stupid finish at Armgeddon 2000.


4. Following a more than impressive performance at the 2001 Rumble, lasting 54-minutes, eliminating 11-men, and being in the final two, Kane is shunted into a tag feud with RIKISHI AND HAKU! Ahem... lame.


5. Did nothing at all from July 2001 through March 2002.

6. Kane vs. X-Pac is rehashed for two weeks, with X-Pac getting the upper-hand thanks to a bicep(?) injury.


7. Returns after SummerSlam 2002 to great responses. He trimmed down and seemed to be more motivated than ever. Becomes a duel champion (IC and Tag) leading up to a Unification match with Triple H at No Mercy 2002. Logic says the hot babyface with the secondary title wins... yeah, right.


8. At WrestleMania XIX, Kane and RVD are bumped to Heat in favor of a MILLER LIGHT "CATFIGHT" that made me wish for a match between Shawn Michaels and Triple H.


9. Kane unmaskes... looking like the Missing Link and Larry Fine's love child. Seriously, my initial reaction was "that's the end of Kane... he'll be fired in a few weeks."


10. After turning heel, and easily pulling in the best ratings for Raw in MONTHS, Kane destroys Linda McMahon, Steve Austin, Rob Van Dam, Eric Bischoff, and Shane McMahon in a path of destruction. But the last on the list wouldn't go away. Oh no... instead of a logical Kane/Goldberg feud, Kane is sent out to sell for SHANE FUCKING MCMAHON in 20-minute matches! I won't bother complaining how awful the finish at Unforgiven 2003 was.


11. The Undertaker feud leading up to WrestleMania XX. So one sided, you'd think it was 1985 all over again when it came to Mike Tyson fights.


12. Loses a feud to Edge over... uh... whatever. Who cares. The build up for this was a brief return of Grandmaster Sexay. Fuck WWE just for that!


13. The nonsense between Kane and Lita. Holy crap... yes, it was funny in a twisted way, but really... oh my God, I can't even describe how stupid this was.


14. Snitsky feud.


15. Pathetic performances at all Rumbles and Survivor Series' in the last 5 years.


16. The May 19th shit. Again, Kane is rebuilt into a destructive monster... instead he shits his pants in the presence of A FAKE KANE (DSW's the Freakin' Deacon dressed as Old School Kane). The feud ends with Kane sending Fakane packing... but not before Kane does a CLEAN JOB to the schmuck!


17. Disappears, then goes into a feud with Umaga. Guess my reaction.


18. Moves to Smackdown and feuds with MVP, the worst wrestler to debut to get so much mic' time. Kane loses about 7 matches in a row before winning his "match", which he entered with an 0-3 record.


19. Kane/Khali? Youch... Taker/Gonzalez has some competition for a potential Worst WrestleMania match.


20. Let's see...

Kane was supposed to be a long-lost tortured soul half-brother of the Undertaker, who was burned beyond recognition and lost an eye.

Then he developed magic powers and set people and things on fire.

Then he ended up being Paul Bearer's son.

Then he turned into a love sick puppy.

Then he somehow busted out of his prison like home in 1992 to learn to drive, party, and hook up with Katie Vick, who he killed and raped, in the same night.

Then he talked about a kid from his child hood that was no good, despite being locked away in solitary confinement in his home and at psychiatric wards.

Yeah.


Despite all of these (and countless other) booking brain-farts, the Kane character somehow remains over. Sure, it requires a new paint job every 6-months only to be trashed once again, but this is one of those miracle gimmicks that can stay over for years and years despite being buried time and time again in favor of people who were either jobbed out months later or just sucked so much it was an insult to under-skilled wrestlers around the world.

Holy Jeez. You weren't joking.

I'll take some time to read this though. Looks interesting, in a Kane stalking kind of way.

That was an excellent write up, Scrooge, I bet you feel better now.

Actually, it doesn't. I just hate WWE right now. I haven't watched a single second of Raw, Smackdown, or ECW since January 23rd, and I plan on keeping that streak going.

<----watched Impact instead of Raw when they went head-to-head.

That reminds me of that time I reviewed the prime time Impact special instead of watching Smackdown. When WWE lost a viewer thanks to a taped episode of Impact, that should have counted for something :P

But it's Smackdown... it has shit ratings to begin with.

Just remember. It was HHH and his refusal to job to anyone in 2002 that fucked over Kane in the fall.

I could've gone into that, but I'm not sure what the hell went on there. Did Trips pull a power play, or did someone really think having the World Champ win the secondary title was a good idea?

Kane's vocal chords also mysteriously improved at the behest of X-Pac. He needed that vocal chord thingie until X-pac told him not to use it anymore. Yay, X-Pac!

That vocalizer was truly creepy and losing it hurt his character. I was about 24 or so and I remember getting freaked out when he used it. Along with the Yeti on the Disney Matterhorn ride, it was one of the few things that scared me once I passed 16.

That was when HHH would agree to drop the title to someone and then decide not to at the last minute. IE Kane, Booker T and RVD. I believe Goldberg became his defacto excuse for jobbing refusals in 2003.

The whole mess with the World Title coming into play was because he balked at having to wear the IC Title. Funny how a year and a half earlier he didn't have a problem beating Jericho for the belt and then royally fucking over Jeff Hardy.

By royally fucking over, you mean no selling everything Jeff did that was a signature move of his, squashed him the entire match, and only lost in the first place because of interference?

You forgot the rematch where he did the exact same thing.

And the finish wasn't even shown. We got to see Austin beat up Matt while the pin happend.

That was my first experience of HHH hate. Me: Why is he making Jeff look so awful?

My first real HHHate was WM2000.

I dug Trips back then, and it probably wasn't his idea. I say that's more McMahon hate... did we REALLY need the "McMahon's in every corner" crap? And another Vince heel turn? And Linda on TV, using the old WrestleMania song from 1993 as her music?

Yeah, I don't think any hate is warranted for Trips going over at WM2000, things were different back then. Besides, I was a complete mark at the time and my complete disbelief that Trips retained that night gave him such overwhelming (positive) heel heat with me, I'll never forget it.

It also worked, because from what I remember, Backlash, headlined by the Rock/HHH rematch, did a really good buyrate, far better than the usual Non-Big 4 events.

That was just the first instance. Then it picked up steam as he refused to lose out to Angle in that whole love triangle thing and then there was beating Jericho at Fully Loaded but Benoit and Angle lost so it didn't stand out too much.

I'd also like to point out that all of the current mess started with Fully Loaded 2000. I've thought long and hard about it and all of the current problems stem from that show.

I forgot a lot of what happend at that show, other than the unnecessary going over of Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho at the hands of 'Taker and Trips, respectively.

That show was supposed to be about the new blood rising up and challenging the establishment. Going into the expectations were that Jericho would win and that Angle might win. The general IWC feeling at the time on 411wrestling was that at least one needed to win and it was preferable for two to win. Benoit wasn't expected to win as the Rock had just won the belt. Of course all 3 lost with Angle getting totally squashed by the Taker.

That seemed to be the most unusual decision. It wasn't even close to being an even match. It ran 9 minutes, and Angle was bumping for 8 minutes and 45 seconds of that.

Yeah, it was a very big "wtf" reaction right after the show. And few people complained about the WWF at the time other than the feeling that Rock/HHH was getting run into the ground.

At the time I was still in mark mode, and was disappointed that Benoit, Angle, and Jericho lost all their matches (more so in Jericho's case, but I even kind of hoped that the heels Angle and Benoit would have strong showings). The blow of all three losing at Fully Loaded was that Jericho/HHH and Rock/Benoit were both ****+ matches, but it did show a turning point in the course of WWE history, where a glass ceiling was established, particularly by Triple H and The Undertaker.

When Taker finally did job to Angle, we got the stupid debut of ERIC Angle. That really pissed me off.

As a mark, I was so upset that Kurt Angle won the WWF title, I wanted him to lose it immediately. That entire Survivor Series was pretty stupid, IMHO, what with the Eric Angle debut and Stone Cold murdering Triple H in the car.


It was even worse when they did the Kurt and Eric switcheroo again on Smackdown in 2003, and Michael Cole and Tazz acted like it was an act of unheard of brilliance.

I was at the Raw after the stupid Eric Angle thing happened. His only television appearance.

Triple H no-selling DEATH was pretty farfetch'd, too.

He also fucked over Rikishi pretty good in 2000 now that I remember. Rikishi is another guy they really blew it with. They'd make him look like a million bucks one week and then there'd be no follow through for weeks at a time.

I will also mention that Survivor Series 2000 took place a mere two months after a certain Stephanie McMahon took over the WWF creative team too...

She kinda makes me wish Vince Russo was booking again... in WWE.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The WWF was on such a creative roll for most of 2000, and then in September Steph took over. Her wretched influence on the quality of the shows wasn't obvious at first, though it was during that time where I started noticing that I wasn't getting into the shows as much as I used to.

And we started seeing less and less of the roster. By the end of 2001, if you wanted to see the undercard guys, you had to watch Jakked at 1 a.m., or Heat.

She definately destroyed the WWE with her shitty writing. They had a good run up to X-7 but it was awful with the Taker/Kane vs. Austin/HHH storylines. It started looking up when Benoit and Jericho got the push but then Benoit got hurt and then they hit the panic button and pushed the Invasion angle ahead too soon.

They really should've stuck with the idea of building WCW as it's own brand. They should've done the roster split only Bischoff talks Smackdown and creates the new Nitro and Vince keeps Raw.

How anyone can fuck that angle up, UNINTENTIONALLY, is beyond me. Of course, we all know Vince tanked it intentionally to make WCW look like shit and WWE look like gold.

Wrong question. How could he fuck it up twice. He had the chance to do it twice with Ric Flair being the first chance in 1991. He really stole the Crockett playbook from when he fucked up buying the UWF in the 80s.

I don't think that would've worked either, but it would probably have been better than what we got.

There is no one I blame more for the fall of quality WWE programming than Stephanie McMahon. What was the reason for her being placed as creative writer in the first place and getting rid of the guy (forget his name) that had made the WWF so great in 2000? What qualifications did she have? I know the obvious answer is that she is a McMahon, but I can't imagine that she was busting with so many great ideas that Vince and company would want her to write the shows.

Also, Johnny Ace has done a lot to harm the company with his complete inability for scouting good talent.

I thought Johnny Ace sucked, but NOTHING touched the bitch he signed and backed up, who not only new shit about wrestling, but insulted VICKI GUERRERO for her appearence. Then she questioned Stephanie McMahon's knowledge of "the business."

Really, shouldn't Vince screen his employees?

I definitly agree. That bitch was on television for such a brief amount of time, I didn't even see her before she was gone.

This thread has got me incredibly upset. It is so frustrating to look back on how great the WWF was and how much it has sucked in the years since. Even though I think things have been slowly picking up again for the past year or two, they still do a startling amount of mindblowingly stupid shit that makes me question my fandom.

Johnny Ace is actually a very strong booker. The really good run WCW had for the last few months of exisiting were due to Ace and Taylor booking it all.

Yeah, but as head of talent relations he has been horrible.