The 9 Darkest Story Lines in Wrestling History

For an entertainment medium that has long appealed to children, pro wrestling has, nevertheless, had a long history of churning out sordid, opaque storylines…you know, the kind that are so sinister, you wonder if these wrestling scribes don’t secretly wish they were writing for Dexter or True Blood. Don’t believe me? Let’s have a look…

Poor Paul!

This, as most of you will remember, was the atrocious main event angle that blighted WWE Smackdown late last year.  Not only was it poorly written and executed, with a completely laughable premise (just why were the authorities letting Edge get away with all this?), the storyline also had a distinctly darker edge than most WWE storylines. 

Edge (our brave heroic babyface, remember?) kidnapped Kane’s father, Paul Bearer, and proceeded to drag the poor man around the country and show him being subjected to torture and humiliate him, with the aim of mentally torturing Kane (who Edge claimed was simply “getting a taste of his own medicine” after Kane spent years using similar psychological warfare on opponents).  

This doesn’t sound dark enough? Well, in the end, Edge tricked his enemy into accidentally murdering Paul and then laughed about it the next week on Smackdown. Pretty soon Kane forgot about it too (likely because WWE management realized how rotten the entire saga was).  Yeah, this angle was more than a little twisted.  

Winter Kills!

OK, how is this for an unusual television character? Winter is an English, lesbian, superpowered, invisible, potentially homicidal wrestler in love with slender TNA Knockout Angelina. Make no mistake about it; Winter (real name: Katie Lea) was obsessive. She stalked Angelina, drugged her, drove away Angelina’s best friend Velvet and even seemed to ponder stabbing her to death with scissors once and generally acted nuts. Velvet bravely vowed to rescue her friend from Winter’s clutches but, eh, seemed to forget about her after a while and moved on to feuding with ODB.

Angelina then proceeded to walk around drugged and in a haze for months, and nobody did anything at all to help her (hardly that unusual in TNA, in fairness). Messed up? Well, it got worse. Angelina stopped being a zombie after a while, cleaned up and got her free will back, but still doggedly stuck with her English stalker, and the two are now a solid heel tag team in TNA’s knockout division. It seems she really doesn’t mind Winter being completely insane and may even be pleased and impressed with her new companion.

Abyss

The story of the monster Abyss (who is Vince Russo’s incredibly blatant attempt to recreate WWE’s Kane, mask and all) deserves a section of its own. The backstory of Abyss can be explained thus: Abyss (real name: Chris Parks) went to prison for 20 years after his mom shot his abusive dad, and, out of dogged loyalty, he took the blame. Then, he was forced to do Jim Mitchell’s bidding after the maleficent manager found out the truth and threatened to reveal all to the cops. Oh, and in the end, Jim “Darth Vader” Mitchell revealed he was actually Abyss’s real father and him and the mom were in on this heinous plan together (And they say Russo’s writing is too complicated).

Abyss was also embroiled in a deeply destructive patient/doctor relationship with Dr Stevie who, under the guise of helping him, attempted to exploit then destroy his patient.

Not that Abyss himself is totally innocent. In the last few years, he's kidnapped audience members, abducted and tortured staff members and even held TNA President Dixie Carter hostage once! To say these backstage skits came off like a bad Saw sequel would be an insult to bad Saw sequels. Needless to say, Abyss has never faced any legal consequences for his actions, which leads us to believe that the cops in Florida don't watch Impact Wrestling (like everyone else).   

Eddie Exploitation

Scripting a WWE performer to say a beloved recently deceased—and devout Christian—wrestler was “down there in hell?" Turning the entire sorry saga in Smackdown’s main event angle? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea?  Well, Vince McMahon (who probably wasn't in his right mind at the time, come to think of it). He thought it was a terrific idea that would get Eddie’s good friend Rey Mysterio over huge. And he wouldn’t listen to any protests, so everyone who had a problem with the tastelessness of the angle (i.e. almost everyone) had to sit back and keep their mouths shut.

On the bright side, it did lead to Eddie’s widow, Vickie, getting a full-time spot on the roster, where she ended up becoming one of the greatest heel managers of recent times. So at least it wasn’t all bad.

Katie Vick

What list of sinister storylines would be complete without this gem? This exceptionally appalling storyline (that stank up Monday Night Raw in late 2002) is already well known, and serves as a complete embarrassment to anyone who was dumb enough to be involved with it, and it really doesn’t need going into again. But needless to say, Kane (who has participated in a ton of absolutely rotten storylines during his time in the company) really should start saying, “No” to certain storylines when he’s presented with them, for his sake—and ours.

Linda, the Zombie

Vince and Linda McMahon's on-screen marital strife has often gone to dark places. Indeed, in the storylines, Vince is presented as an uncaring, selfish husband who cheats on his long-suffering and saintly wife with everything in a skirt.  This was best illustrated in a late 2000 angle in which Vince angrily demanded a divorce from her on national television, causing a humiliated Linda to have a nervous breakdown and allowing her husband to have total control of the company (first thing he did was get rid of General Manager Mick Foley). Worse still, a triumphant Vince would later brag he was keeping Linda trapped in a nursing home and drugging her, in an attempt to block any type of recovery she may make. He then proceeded to flaunt gorgeous new girlfriend Trish Stratus around and usually made out with her right in front of a drugged, docile Linda. Yikes.

On the bright side, this disturbing angle did provide viewers with Linda McMahon’s best acting performance to date. Indeed, Mrs McMahon was perfect just sitting there in a robotic state, saying nothing and blankly staring into space. It beat most of her promos, that’s for sure.  

Sandman Gets Crucified

The absolutely crazy work/shoot grudge storyline between Raven and Sandman in 1996 plummeted to a new depth in October 1996 in an angle in which babyface Sandman was crucified by perennial foe Raven. This shocking angle even managed to shake up some of the Philadelphia’s promotion hard-core base (who were, by that point, almost unshockable).

How bad was it? Well, Raven had to come out and apologise, and devout Christian Kurt Angle, who was in an attendance and had been talking with Paul Heyman about possibly getting involved with ECW, got so offended he stormed out and vowed never to do any sort of business with the company ever again.

Piggie James

What fan didn’t cringe at this one? Heels Michelle McCool and Layla El taunted Mickie James for having the audacity not to be a size zero and actually have a healthy figure on her, and Mickie cried. A lot. Although Mickie did gain some measure of revenge by beating McCool and taking her title at the Royal Rumble 2010, winning her fifth Women’s Championship in the process.

This rather crude and absurd storyline (come on: who would really call Mickie fat!?) is given a darker, real-life edge when you consider the reports that it was WWE management’s unsubtle way of letting Mickie know she should drop a few pounds. Gee, these people really need a decent Human Resources Department, huh?

Big Boss Man Crosses the Line

Hey, in respect to the Edge and Paul Bearer angle, messing with an opponent’s father is hardly something new in wrestling. The Big Show’s lacklustre title reign in 1999 was not helped by the dark and tasteless angle in which mid-carder the Big Boss Man cruelly taunted the giant over the news that his beloved father had just died of cancer (which wasn’t true; in reality, Paul Wight’s father had died many years before). Worst still, the Big Boss Man then crashed the funeral service, recited a crude poem, then chained the coffin to his truck and proceeded to drive off while a shell-shocked and grieving Wight did his best to cling on to his father’s coffin. Classy. It was vulgar and insulting angles like this that often cause many wonder how much of a “Golden Age” WWE’s Attitude Era really was.