QOTD #4: Who Betta Than ... Kane?

As time rolls on, I’m going to want to make the QOTD have a set theme on specific days of the week, and Tuesdays are a good spot to ask questions related to a major player, or happening on RAW. So with that in mind…

Today’s Question: What is your favorite Kane memory? We’ll have your answers tomorrow.

Yesterday we discussed the darkest day in wrestling history, and in between roughly a thousand posts by the Red Power Ranger, we got some good stuff. Here are the highlights, ripped straight from you.

Magoonie NOT Teddy Belmont: R-Truth vs Mark Henry?

I see we’re off to a fast start.

Petrock: When Beware of Dog got struck by lightning and the lights went out.

And I trust that's out of our system now?

Brian Bayless: When they found Akeem from the deepest and darkest part of Africa

One more and I’m sending the BoD to time out.

jeff bailey: While not the darkest, the death of Joey Marella is one that sticks out as it's when Gorilla Monsoon began falling apart. He provided the soundtrack to a huge portion of my childhood and by all accounts was a wonderful man that certainly did not deserve to outlive his own child. Without Marella's death we may have had many more years of the big ape on commentary.

Now we’re on track.

Devin Harris: Mine is the final Nitro. Most of the wrestlers had guaranteed contracts they could ride out for a year or two. There were a lot of other people that lost jobs that probably didn't have anything to fall back on. Plus, there was one less place for guys to work and make a decent living.

Stranger In The Alps: The day that Time-Warner decided they wanted out of the wrestling business. This opened the door to Vince McMahon killing his only competition, which has since led to the staleness of the product.

Extant1979: when Vince finalized the deal to buy WCW. Within the span of a few weeks, we lost the indy promotion that could in ECW and the second-biggest promotion in the country, in WCW. It completely shifted the landscape of professional wrestling, and not in a good way, as guys no longer had the options they used to. TNA is nowhere near becoming that alternative for guys that WCW was. With no competition, things just get stale.

I was the ultimate WCW apologist, and it was a heartbreaking night to realize the previous 2 years of absolute bile had finally cost everything. I always kept a lantern of hope; that maybe having Scott Steiner as a killing machine, and maybe having Booker T in the wings as the next big thing, and maybe Sean O’Haire and Mark Jindrak were going to revolutionize tag-team wrestling – but there was nothing saving that sinking ship.

Basscase: No one mentioned Robocop?

How this was overlooked by every other poster, I’ll never know. He ruined fictional characters appearing on professional wrestling programming for years, which deprived us of such opportunities as having The Terminator, or Screech Powers run-in. Thankfully that’s all over now, and made up people like The Muppers or Kevin Federline are free again to grace us with their presence.

The Fuj: Triple H getting booked to marry Steph...

No amount of willing, or changing of history was going to make Triple H go away. Vince would have sooner sold his daughter to Asian businessmen with Bobby Heenan as the liaison before he was going to let Triple H go anywhere. Hell, without Stephanie to keep him an honest family man, we might still be wondering when John Cena was finally going to get the push he deserved.

Tom Dawkings: I thought the Montreal screwjob was WWF's darkest moment and believed the company would be going out of business soon.

A lot of people probably felt the same way. The way Vince McMahon played the publicity of that thing and decided to turn himself into the biggest heel in the history of the business was nothing short of masterful genius.

y2j420: Katie fucking Vick...err..."Kane" fucking Katie Vick...

HE SCREWED HER BRAINS OUT! GET IT? GET IT??? N’YUK N’YUK! LAUGH PEONS!

Kurt Cobain: Bruiser Brody getting murdered and the guy that did it getting away with it.

A disgusting, corrupt system allowed Invader #1 to walk without repercussions. It’s pretty telling about the state of the system in Mexico during the 80’s were when Zeb Colter wasn’t even given his subpoena until after the trial was done.

Zanatude: Black Saturday. Vince McMahon showing up on my TV on Georgia Championship Wrestling with no warning. It's hard to overstate what a shock this was. It would be as if Vince McMahon took over Nitro at the height of it's popularity, with no warning, and replaced it with back to back episodes of WWE Superstars.

Vince had the right idea, just the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong crowd. Instead of easing himself into the market, he strutted into the South as only he could, gave a big old “YOURRRRRRREEE FIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREDDDDDD” to GCW, and gave you oiled and roided goons trading blows instead of the usual fare. The theoretical lesson here is to never tell your audience what they like, but to let them choose, but I’m fairly sure I just heard JBL tell me that Adam Rose is “great” for the 37^th time.

CruelConnectionNumber2: DAWN OF THE INTERNET is the darkest period of wrestling. Killed the Apter mags, made taped shows seem lame (reading spoilers ruins everything), made house shows seem all the same, killed tape trading, and made wrestling fans spoiled and put everything at their fingertips as opposed to having demand for the product.

Not bad. While I disagree it killed tape trading initially (because the business was able to boom with easier marketing before WWE’s copyright lawyers started screwing that up), I’d agree that it stopped a lot of things from being “special”. I once wrote, and I don’t think I’m wrong, that the WWE could wait until 2020 to turn John Cena heel and it simply won’t have the power of Hulk Hogan’s because we’re too smart for it now, and we’re all waiting for it. But that’s the evolution of the business, good or bad, it’s up to wrestling to keep one step ahead of us – and every once in awhile hit us with a gold mine like CM Punk’s pipebomb and subsequent match at MITB11.

DanimalCrossing: Sgt. Slaughter turning his back on the US was a pretty dark moment.

I was about 9 years old, and also a Canadian – so I could not have understood the impact of this quite to the degree of people who were undergoing very real angst about the Gulf War. This was as dark as it was stupid, but thankfully the WWF learned its lesson and never ever exploited anything again, except that one time with Muhammed Hassan.

jobber123: The real answer to this question is the day HHH got his vanity belt. It immediately devalued the top title in the wwe by making two of them thus watering down anyone's ultimate reason for caring about or following the wwe product. The business nose dived and never recovered.

The SmackDown side had been specifically stacked in order to ensure Triple H was the lead dog on RAW, but with two belts suddenly floating around, our top contenders lined up were Bubba Dudley, an unprepared Jeff Hardy, a neutered RVD, and a far too black Booker T. I don’t know if it was dark, but it was certainly not very compelling television.

David: I would go with when WWF went to a public company. They had to listen to stockholders and not the fans. They couldn't do more outrageous stuff like choking an announcer with his tie. They had to start making poopy jokes. They can't do anything controversial because some stockholders might complain.

It’s not so much that they can’t, but they have to commit to a direction and be ready to explain to stock holders why it’s happening. Keep in mind, they’ve been public since 1999, so the stock holders have seen a lot – but yes, it keeps the unpredictability to a bare minimum. In the Social Media era, where stories explode in a moment’s notice, it’s very unlikely we’ll see anything like Pillman pulling a gun on live television any time soon.

Sweet Lee: Owen's botched tombstone on Austin. If that doesn't happen, Austin probably enjoys an even longer reign on top, gets some awesome fresh matchups, and might still be kicking around for part time dream match purposes.

But, we might be without the SCSA podcast, and that wouldn’t do. Swig of beer for the workin’ man!

Andrew Champagne: The Goldberg-Lesnar match from WM20 hasn't been talked about enough. That should've been a dream match that fans wanted to see, and then it leaked that both guys were leaving and everyone shat all over it.

This was more a disappointment than anything. My best friend and I were pumped up for months on this matchup; and when it finally occurred, there were no words. We were so upset and deflated that we walked over to 7-Eleven in the middle of the biggest PPV of the year in order to decompress (and get slurpees duh). Last year before Mania 29, we were talking about that match and wondered if our expectations had been too high going in, so we gave it a second look. Christ almighty, there’s the drizzling shits, but this was a Niagara waterfall of laxative induced trauma.

Crikey Mate Down Under Aussie: Avoiding the genuine tragedies, Punk's title reign coming an end to the Rock, via ONE people's elbow, made me a little sick in the stomach, he deserved better than that. Probably an odd choice to many, but Punk's my favourite and that hurt.

Not that I can offer much in the way of a silver lining, but had Punk not turned heel in order to specifically feed the title to The Rock, he likely would have lost the belt by SummerSlam and the legendary run would have been halved and … well, not legendary.

Marv Cresto: WrestleMania9: Despite working his balls off for close to a decade and almost a year of rebuilding the Fed after Hogan disappeared, Hulk shows up and takes a main event from Bret Hart leaving us with a year of damaged Bret, fat Yoko, and completely dead to the crowd Lex. Hogan leaves shortly after for WCW.

To be fair, Lex Luger’s reaction wasn’t Hogan’s fault.

Porn Peddlin Jeff Vinson: Keeping it 100%: The day extreme wrestling decided to go mainstream . That day started the decline of a lot of wrestlers careers. Now I'm not talking the occasional chairshot and blading, I'm talking about real dangerous things with thumbtack, fire and the like. Once ECW, WCW and the WWE decided to try to one-up themselves I feared for wrestlers lives.

Great mention here. While not a specific day, it certainly exploded on to the mainstream fast, with a lot of pressure put on the performers to one up each other, and then go out and do it again the next day. You had people like Mick Foley doing the Nestea plunge on a nightly basis in front of 100 fans, just to collect a paycheque. Jeff Hardy still hasn’t found a ladder tall enough to fall off of – and he’s a guy who’s been to rehab more times than his brother Matt can count (which too be fair probably isn’t very high).

Bobby: When Mae Young gave birth to a hand.

I was going to make a smart-assed joke here, but giving it a minute of thought, I can think of multiple conversations I’ve had with friends and co-workers who were fans during the attitude era, but will claim that the minute Mae Young gave birth to the hand, that was it for them. I can think of 3 of 4 people who’ve said this to me in the last 5 years off the top of my head. Now with the conspiracy theory running, I’ll even give the book title to Scott for free: “Hand Me Down: How Geriatric Rubber Fists Ended The WWF’s Greatest Era”.

VintageGamer: The Fingerpoke of Doom ranks as the darkest moment in wrestling, just because it marked the beginning of the end for WCW.

If nothing else, it moved the gas pedal from steady to suicidal. In one fell swoop, Goldberg’s heat was killed, every midcarder was made worthless, Ric Flair was made powerless, and once again Hogan and his buddies were back on top with no direct challengers to the gold. Triple H took notes.

Wow: Owen dying would be my choice. He really seemed to be enjoying himself in 98-99. I will probably never get over that.

Adam “Colorado” Curry: Owen. I was more sad about his death than a lot of my relatives.

Johnny Polo: Owen by a mile for me. Nearly every other wrestler that died young reaped what he sowed. Owen was a victim. A victim of morons coming up with a stunt that was moronically executed.

Hoss_of_BoD: I don't think it gets any worse than Owen dying in the ring. Owen died during a fucking PPV; thankfully, a promo was being aired when he fell.

That night at the Kempner arena was chilling. I remember debating whether or not to order the show (I can clearly remember them offering an Undertaker pendant to anyone who could show proof of purchase), but I finally decided against it. That night, I was reading condolences to the Hart family online and immediately figured Stu must have passed. Never could I have imagined something like that happening on a professional wrestling show.

Often, there’s a ripple effect by big happenings. The obvious take-away from Owen’s pointless, AVOIDABLE death was that wrestlers had no business doing stunt-work. You don’t need to spend hours analyzing data, and building power point presentations to make the point; the fact is, one death was too many. Instead, over the next two years, you’ve got Shane McMahon falling 30 feet off the SummerSlam set, Sting being lit on fire and falling off the WCW scaffolding (though it was likely a stuntman), and worst of all, Chris Kanyon being tossed off a 3-tiered cage in the SAME ARENA OWEN DIED. It took years and more tragedy to reform the entire business of taking risks that meant nothing to the product; and the most sickening point for me all these years later is that his death came without repercussions because nobody learned anything until much later.

MichaelXavier: The day Kevin Sullivan decided to book his wife and Chris Benoit in a wife-stealing angle.

I think we’re getting closer to “much later”.

Peyton Drinking: uhmmm you know..that day the guy everyone liked killed his family.

mattindeed: There is only one answer to this question.....JTG loses his job.....oh, and the Benoit thing.

Ray Is A Nerd: Obvious answer is Benoit, with Owen and Eddie up there.

daveschlet: Benoit was the darkest day that I can think of off the top of my head.

WILLYOUSTOP?!?: No question - it's a tie between Benoit murdering his family and Owen dying live on PPV.

Mar Solo: It's a toss up between Owen and Benoit. Owen's death happened on a PPV in front of thousands of people LIVE. No matter what WWE did after that moment, they would have been painted in a bad light somehow. Benoit's murder/death/kill/suicide just put a huge black spot on the business, and cost them the Jackass crew for that year's Summerslam. WWE deserves A LOT of credit for digging themselves out of the hole the murders put them in.

Darren: I dont think there's any question here: Chris Benoit by a landslide, followed by Owen.

parallax1978: Benoit. Obv.

Mick: Owen and Benoit. No real other "top" choices.

Michael Weyer: Benoit obviously. That a man held by so many as all that was right about wrestling could do that was horrific and we're still feeling the effects.

Garth Holmberg: Chris Benoit. There can't be another option among "modern" moments and tragedies. Eddie's death hurt, but Benoit's fall from grace, killing his family and himself, questioned everything I believed in with professional wrestling and kept me away from the product for nearly 5 years.

CoolCraig: This should be far and away the Chris Benoit murder-suicide. The only thing that would come close would be Owen Hart's death.

Mister E Logdriver: Take your pick between Owen plummeting to his death on live television, or Benoit killing his family.

Adam Moore: If we're talking serious, dark stuff, Benoit's death is a clear number one.

ABeyAnce1: I think the only real answers for me would have to be Benoit. Great worker, put on 4 to 5 star matches, and had a great career only for it to get thrown away within one weekend.

Lenny Vowels: Benoit, and it's not close. I still continue to mourn Eddie and Owen to this day, but neither of them committed a real-life heel turn and put a black mark on the industry the way that Chris did.

PrimeTimeTen: It's Chris Benoit's death. More specifically the Tuesday. Sunday he was away under mysterious circumstances. Monday, we found out he and his family had died. But it was on Tuesday that we found out why. I was in a fog all that day. Benoit was my favourite wrestler and dealing with the news and its repercussions was like walking through a nightmare.

AlexBull: The Benoit murders. No question. Owen's death is a close second, but nothing else exposed the nastiest depths of wrestling's soft white underbelly like the images of Chris, Nancy and Daniel splayed across television screens for weeks on end. Look at it this way: The business never received more sustained mainstream press, good bad or otherwise, than it did following those murders.

Jared Bellow: Picking anything other than Benoit or Owen Hart seems wrong. Owen Hart happened during a strong period for wrestling popularity so it got brushed under the rug a little easier but Benoit completely changed things forever, irreversibly.

Andy PG: The darkest moment in wrestling was when Chris Benoit, the man who made a lot of people believe in wrestling again, murdered his family. How is this an argument?

Well Andy, judging from everyone’s comments, it really wasn’t.

Today is June 24^th. Which happens to be the day Chris Benoit died.

I can still remember the entire week like it just happened. I was working a late shift, when I saw the news that Benoit had died. I felt dizzy, and weak; there was simply no way. And his entire family? I knew what common sense was telling me, but I had recalled the story from the weekend about the family being ill and thought carbon monoxide poisoning?

I got home in time to see most of RAW, and I googled furiously for updates. As the show continued, the gruesome details started to come out, and I knew it had to be true, despite an unwillingness to believe or accept any of it.

The next week was just heartbreaking. From rumored stories of his son being developmentally challenged, to idiot theories that Kevin Sullivan committed it … from the media hogs who took this as their opportunity to cut promos in national spotlight; the likes of Marc Mero and Debra McMichael. Nancy Grace was everywhere, condemning the sport to hell. John Cena was edited in a nationally televised interview as giving the thumbs up to steroids. Kevin Nash was cut off as soon as he gave a viewpoint that opposed the “steroids is evil” motif. Everyone had an angle, everyone needed to be heard. There has never been anything that shut down the business quite like it.

7 years later, the shock has passed. There have been huge reforms on brain trauma, largely in part by the amazing work of Chris Nowinski who isn’t recognized enough for the work he and his institute do, and have done. The mortality rate has slowly declined, and we are less likely to open RAW with a graphic and a salute than we were a decade ago. The face of the company for the better part of the last 4 years was a man who openly opposed drug and alcohol use. Overall, we’re in a better place.

Still, every year on June 24^th I am forced to remember the tragedies of that day, and the two innocent lives lost in the process. I hope we never experience anything that even comes close to it, ever again.

I promise to keep it much lighter tomorrow.