Fanon Discontinuity/Professional Wrestling
Professional Wrestling writers get it wrong sometimes, too. Here are some bits of Wrestlecrap some fans would just love to write out of their minds:
Fanon Discontinuity
World Wrestling Entertainment
- Some fans disregard the existence of WWE entirely, claiming that the company died when the name changed from WWF to WWE.
- Some fans claim the company truly died when Vince McMahon bought WCW and ECW, thus leaving no competition for the WWF at the time, causing the quality of the promotion's product to degrade significantly.
- And others say the existence of WWF stopped after Wrestlemania 17 (long considered the legitimate end of the Attitude Era), which saw Stone Cold Steve Austin shaking hands with Vince McMahon, his arch-rival and the Big Bad of the entire company.
- As noted in the picture above, some people refuse to acknowledge the career of Chris Benoit following the double-murder/suicide of the Benoit family in 2007.
- This was taken to huge extremes by the WWE, which ran from the reasonable of pulling his DVD ("Hard Knocks: The Chris Benoit Story") out of print, to arbitrarily pulling RANDOM DVDs out of print that feature him prominently, yet NOT pulling out of print OTHER events that feature him prominently. All commentary about him for Vengeance 2007 (the event he was scheduled to be in when he was murdering) was muted, and the crowd chanting "We Want Benoit!" was muted as well.
- BenWHO?: Many members of Game FAQS Pro Wrestling Board simply replace Benoit with Perry Saturn or Hardcore Holly in WWE history.
- It's rumored that the WWE will start acknowledging his existence again on DVD sets but will edit out any forms of praise for him.
- Confirmed as of the Satan's Prison - The Anthology of the Elimination Chamber DVD. Benoit is featured in one of the matches, and all commentary about him is edited out.
- The iron curtain appears to be raised up another few inches. Chris Benoit was not only featured on "The Best of WCW Nitro" (in segments where he appeared) but was mentioned by name by the commentators.
- Confirmed as of the Satan's Prison - The Anthology of the Elimination Chamber DVD. Benoit is featured in one of the matches, and all commentary about him is edited out.
WCW
- Many people never even watched WCW, and the WWF didn't mention them by name on the air until WCW started doing it first. On the flip side, many fans refuse to acknowledge WCW's existence at all, citing such examples as RoboCop showing up one night, David Arquette becoming champion, and the Fingerpoke of Doom.
- Ooh, ooh! Don't forget the argument between Rick Steiner and Chucky the Killer Doll, just in time for his latest film Bride of Chucky! Come on, we all know wrestling is fake, but it doesn't have to be embarrassing, too.
- A smaller fraction of fans believe that wrestling peaked when Goldberg won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship from "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan on Nitro, that wrestling exploded due to the awesome climax, and that fans simply moved on to watch other things from that point on.
ECW
- Many fans saw WWE's 2000s incarnation of ECW as being a complete bastardization of what Paul Heyman's original vision of extreme or hardcore wrestling was. In fact, many have gone so far as to label it 'Entertainment Championship Wrestling'. Seeing champions like Bobby Lashley and Vince McMahon, the eventual departure of Paul Heyman, and then the introduction of the new "Platinum Phoenix" ECW Championship, it's not hard to see why some fans disregarded the entire show's existence.
- A good portion of the fans that do regard the show's existence believe it was a fairly entertaining show that helped to build up new personalities. They just wish it wasn't called ECW.