WWE Accident on June 23, 2008 with Vince McMahon

During the second week of Vince McMahon's "Million Dollar Monday" promotion (a gimmick in which the chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment was giving away one million dollars a night to "random" viewers), the show ended with the stage falling apart with Vince on the stage, leading to his being "crushed" under this huge marquee sign that falls hard onto the stage. Later that night the WWE website acknowledges the tragedy and announces that the giveaway promotion has been suspended for the foreseeable future.

I have been a loyal WWE fan for twenty years and I have started to become disgusted with the far beyond acceptable storylines that this company has been taking just to increase ratings and take back revenues from competing company Total NonStop Action (TNA).

Last year shortly after the draft episode of the show, Vince attempted to kill his character by "blowing up" himself inside his limo in the back of the arena. After getting very deep into the story to the point that fans from all over the country were calling the FBI and wasting these people's time trying to verify if that explosion was real or setup. Thousands of young children watch this show and many of them lost sleep and developed serious fears of themselves dying in a car bombing. Three weeks after this stunt was done, Vince had scheduled a special three hour episode that was supposed to be dedicated to the "death of Vince McMahon." The sad reality was that on the weekend before the taping was supposed to be aired on national TV, that wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and son and later himself at his home in Atlanta. And that was real life, not a story line! At the start of that show, Vince stood alone in an empty ring inside an empty arena, admitted that his stunt weeks before was a fake storyline and dedicated the show instead to a three hour dedication to the life and career of Chris Benoit.

This year the draft ended with yet another poor storyline attempt to bring his character to a demise. This time he is on stage on the phone with the last winner of the night (he supposedly won $500,000), when a stage light falls in the center of the ramp. Vince stands in shock looking at the light as a bang sparks and smoke appear only in the section of the stage in front of him. He still stands there (human reaction would be to run away). The camera pans out about one hundred feet and the section of stage he is standing on collapses out from under him. He kicks some plastic bucket out of the when and stands back up for a few seconds. The camera zooms back into Vince (too bad it was from the wrong angle this time) as the large marquee "falls" on him crushing him under the stage.

To make this stunt seem more real, a handful of "enemy" wrestlers (HHH, John Cena, and Edge along with stage hands) come running to his aid (oh they were all hiding below the security rails behind the cameras when this was about to happen) and worked together to try and lift the marquee off the corner of the stage. In one final element, Vince "regains consciousness" and calls out for "Paul" (this is HHH's real name; he is also Vince's real life son-in-law).

There was a fatal flaw to the effect of this "accident" however. When the camera zooms into Vince standing in the fallen corner of the stage, look at the bottom of the three pillars holding the million dollar marquee up. A second before it falls, there are three rods that are all remotely released at the same time which enables the sign to fall. As Vince stands, he is watching the rods for the release so he knows when to fall below the stage again. The marquee hits the stage and Vince is squatting a good six feet below the impact point until the camera zooms into the area where he is on the stretcher.

I am so sick of this faking death storyline. Wrestler Owen Hart really did fall to his death in that ring in front of thousands of fans. Vince and his staff should be ashamed of this disgrace of real tragedy. It is no wonder he keeps losing his best talent and many fans to TNA.