Media Research Failure/Professional Wrestling: Difference between revisions

** This is ironic for two reasons: Harley Race was featured as the booker in the documentary and the production company behind the documentary (Nash Entertainment) was also responsible for the excellent ''Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed'' series.

* Following the [[Chris Benoit]] murders in 2007, ''The Today Show'' did a report on wrestlers who died young. One of the reports said that [[Owen Hart]] died from a heart attack. For the uninitiated, Owen actually fell to his death while preparing for an entrance that would see him rappelling from the rafters into the ring at a pay-per-view event. It's only by the sheer coincidence that the WWE was airing a backstage interview at that moment that the moment of death wasn't broadcast on nationwide television, but it was still a major news story. You'd ''think'' that might stick out enough for them to get the cause of death right, but apparently not. On that same broadcast, they broadcasted Owen's face on the British Bulldog's profile.

{{quote|'''Nancy Grace''': "Mr. [[Bret Hart|[Bret] Hart]], question. Regarding [[[Chris Benoit]]'s] career, I know that he had gone from the elite, one of the Four Horsemen, down to Raw. And that's a little bit of a demotion. How badly do you think he took that?"}}

*** She must have done that twice, because I remember her asking [[Chris Jericho]] that question, who promptly dismembered her.

** Grace also featured a list of wrestlers who died of drug induced and/or non-accidental causes during one of her shows. The list not only included the afformentioned [[Owen Hart]], but also Bruiser Brody (who was killed although his killer claimed self-defence and was acquited on those grounds), Marianna Komlos (AKA Mrs. Cleavage), who died of breast cancer and has ''never'' wrestled in a match, Junkyard Dog and Joey Marella (who both died in car accidents), and [[Andre the Giant]], who died of heart ''failure'', caused by his Acromegaly (Gigantism).

** One of the heads of The CW shortly after the Benoit murders claimed that her network wouldn't be troubled by it because "Benoit was never featured on [[Smack Down]]". Apparently she never watched her own programming, as Benoit had been part of the [[Smack Down]] brand for ''two years'' before being drafted to the ECW brand, and for several years prior to a jump to Raw (when The CW was still UPN).

* Muhammad Hassan was a controversial wrestler whose gimmick was that, despite being a born-and-raised American, being of Middle Eastern descent saw him face racism of all kinds on a nearly daily basis following the September 11th attacks. In 2005, as part of one of Muhammad Hassan's last appearances on WWE programming, he called forth a group of men dressed in ski masks to attack [[The Undertaker]] (a segment which had the misfortune of airing on the same day as an actual terrorist attack). In response to the backlash (besides the usual "It was only a 'terrorist attack' because I'm of Middle Eastern descent" defense), Hassan took things a step further and, in an in-ring promo, attacked a writer at the New York Times for an article in which "Undertaker attacked by Arabs in ski masks." was written. Hassan said of the article: "They were in ski masks! How does he know they were Arab?" As Hassan effectively made that writer and the New York Times as a whole sound like a bunch of racist bastards, fans seemed to actually take his side... until he intimated that the article proved his point: ALL Americans hate Middle Easterners (which garnered Hassan a massive amount of heel heat). After that speech, UPN (the network that carried ''SmackDown!'' at the time) demanded that WWE take Hassan off TV. WWE did this, and following his final match (talked about below), he and his manager Daivari were sent down to developmental territories, where Hassan was eventually released. Many fans believed the Times influenced UPN's decision and really were (or still are) the racist bastards Hassan called them out to be.

** What makes things worse is that Hassan was massively over as a heel, and while his in-ring skill wasn't the greatest, he was improving over time; this actually led him to get a #1 Contender's Match for the World Heavyweight Championship against [[The Undertaker]] at ''The Great American Bash'' in 2005. Originally, he was scheduled to '''win''' that match and go up against [[Batista]] at ''SummerSlam'', WWE's second biggest pay-per-view of the year. But when the pressure from UPN forced Hassan off of television, Hassan was booked to lose the match and never appeared on WWE programming ever again, which infuriated many fans who actually LIKED Hassan.