WWF’s Attitude era: daddy’s coming home (part two)

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1:12It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus by god that's georgie too gorgeous music he's got the steel welcome back to the upshot sponsored by injury lawyers for goddamn you uh welcome back to the upshot wrestling special attitude era all right all right yeah georgie too gorgie wild is still with me absolutely just a soul patch on his face now the the handlebar mustache has gone really literally then how scottie too hot he did it it was quite an awkward toilet break we just had it was awful you know building bumped into quite a lot of people yeah there's quite a sort of winding corridor you've got to get past i thought i'd timed it just right and then as soon as I got to the first corner and the bloke in the joining office just went you're alright you have done up the shirt for the for the rest yeah yeah it's not a luxury my vest offers um right end of part one Mark Henry has just left his subway sandwich in the locker room and told the boys not to touch it but it is within that'll be the end of that right yeah and then they all just left his sandwich and he had a delicious one now unfortunately it was within shitting distance of serial shitter ex-pack and yes he did the horrible deed in Mark Henry's sandwich but it gets so much worse so according to multiple witnesses after he got back from his fight Mark Henry ate the whole sandwich and licked his fingers so he didn't realise or I think the insinuation I'm really looking into this and trying to establish it I think the suggestion is that Mark Henry knew and it was like a macho thing it was a big fuck you yeah it was like a it was like, I'm not going to be bullied by you.

3:16Fuck it. Yeah. Did, did X-Pac, did he take the meatballs out and replace them with shit? I don't know. It was the marinara, isn't it? It's kind of got sauce, hasn't it? Yeah. And he's a meth addict, so it's probably quite, you know. Yeah. I used to work in a subway. Anyone ever, anyone ever shit in a sandwich and give it to you? Anyway, we were talking about this sandwich shitting as part of a, you know, section on pranks and hazing and in many situations it was just bullying so the main instrument of cruelty was the wrestler's court which was this like semi-jokey kangaroo court where punishments were dished out by the it was basically run by the undertaker and bradshaw yeah also known as jbl who were both nearly 40 yeah the veterans yeah maybe too old to be shitting people and like punishing newcomers it was mainly about um just like bullying newcomers so rookies will often find$2 ,000 which is like, you know, when you're a rookie you're not making any money, so it's like just cruel.

4:17Just for anything. Yeah, minor infractions. Miz, do you remember Miz? He was forced to change in the corridors for six months because he'd got crumbs in Chris Benoit's bag after he'd eaten a piece of fried chicken over it. It's quite a light punishment from Chris Benoit. People have suffered worse punishments from Chris Benoit than... In the corridor? Yeah. is it eating the corridor or be murdered by you in a murder suicide in the corridor what are some of the other ones Joe we'll save that for the Chris Benmore episode Raven do you remember Raven yeah was forced to be silent for two months in the locker room by the Undertaker that's ages no one was allowed to speak to them so horrible yeah it's just just mean yeah yeah we haven't really spoken about Undertaker much obviously it's my favourite because again and he's what, he's almost 40 in the Attitude Era?

5:11Yeah. He's knocking on the door and he's been pretending to be a dead bloke for ages and then he just sees everyone else just drinking beers and having fun. So he decides to change into the American Badass. Yeah, the American Badass. Where he just drives a motorbike and drinks beer. Did look fun. Yeah. He's going to crop up a bit later in a strip club. Is he still dead or is he? Yeah, you still. Very confusing. Because it still had a bit of The Undertaker vibe, didn't it? Yeah. yeah so you mentioned expat there obviously on meth and coke and everything obviously drugs were you know were rife a lot of it was party drugs like coke um but more you know a lot of them were on prescription painkillers because obviously their bodies are getting absolutely wrecked um one of those was uh Kurt Angle so he was famously um an actual college wrestler before he joined the WWF and he won gold at the 1996 Olympics, despite having a broken neck.

6:08So he picked up a really nasty injury in trials. He fractured two of his cervical vertebrae, herniated two discs and pulled four muscles in his neck and then still wrestled and won gold, which is insane. That's why he bangs on about it so often. Yeah, which he did. That was kind of it. So when he joined the WWF, his gimmick was just talking about his gold medal. Smart gold medalist. Yeah. Constantly. it's mad that he can break his neck of all people because he's got the widest neck yeah I was going to say is that a feature of having broken it I think I don't know it just makes it all more special like I've got a finger that I've broken it's like a bit bigger is that what makes it his neck maybe that's it because his neck is wider than his head which is I'd always assume that was steroids because a lot of them have that what I call a Florida neck which is like the Vince McMahon even he has a big neck yeah sort of Channing Tatum Yeah, they have a sort of redness to them.

7:00There's a different texture. So yeah, after that, he started taking Vicodin for the pain, for his neck injury. And he was still on them when he signed to the WWF in 1998. He started out taking one a day. By 2004, he was taking 65 a day. Fuck it. How are you getting hold of 65 a day? Yeah, so I think he got 15 or 16 separate prescriptions from different doctors who didn't know each other. Right. And then when the WWF would go to a new city on tour, he would visit every single pharmacy in a day. It's like dope sick vibes. Yeah, that sort of thing. $7 ,000 a month, I think it was costing. I know, wild.

7:41So obviously that's really horrible. I think they tried to make him go to rehab. And yeah, he said no. No, no. He said no, no, no. But he decided to take things into his own hand eventually. I think it's 2004 he says he's going to go cold turkey so he locks himself in his house for five days and spends that time wrapped in a blanket watching the first three Harry Potter movies on repeat only the first three well they're the only three that were out yeah why on repeat? I think just it's kind of like yeah don't you already feel a bit like you're going mad? you know what I mean? I assume you keep sort of like blanking out for parts of them and I guess that's his safe place yeah I'd quite like to see you know, like the train spotting scene where he called turkeys.

8:26I quite like to see the Kurt Angle equivalent. Professor Lupin across the ceiling. Neville Longbottom. Need a fucking hat. Neville Longbottom's head twisting around 360 degrees. Yeah. But I think he's, he's all good now. He's kind of over-end. I like her. We wish him well. No, he's not the worst thing he had to endure that five days from hell. Cause he also, we mentioned Rikishi's stink face already. This is, yeah, this is pretty similar to X-Pac, I'd say. In case people don't remember Rikishi, he was a 425 pound wrestler, big, big guy. And in 1999, he unveiled his signature move, Stink Face, where he'd rub his ass in an opponent's face.

9:10But he was wearing, he would wear like a sort of sumo outfit, so the ass was quite exposed. And obviously it was absolutely vast. And yeah, according to Kurt Angle, Rikishi once gave Kurt the Stink Face with a twist. according to Kurt, he had to go to the bathroom before the match and he didn't wipe his butt. Oh, God. You got a clip. Kurt! Kurt, let's go here! Get away! Angle's not in the middle stand. Here we go! No, Kurt! Actually, back to drugs. So William Regal, do you remember him? Yeah. Flying the flag for the UK, really, for Britain. Real name Darren Matthews. Did really well for a lad from Blackpool.

9:46Is he from Blackpool? Well, he was from the black country originally and then he moved to Blackpool. Right, okay. His accent's a bit of a mix of both. Yeah. Because he's meant to be doing sort of... He's meant to be a sort of posh, like English villain. Yeah. William Regal. But yeah. He got off to a rough start at WWF. So he joined in 98. He'd been impressing in WCW. And so, you know, part of these Attitude Era wars, they brought him in. But he's absolutely caning the drugs. So besides steroids, he was addicted to GHB. Is that liquid? Yeah. It's the one that you like. It's kind of in like a semi-conscious state.

10:19It's the one that you can easily kill yourself. with, isn't it? It's like a liquid that you... Is it liquid ecstasy or is that something else? Sometimes they call it that, yeah, but it's a different drug. Valium, Hypernoval, which is like a sleeping pill, Nubane, which is an injectable opiate, Somers, Hydrocodone, and Percocet. So, absolutely fistfuls of just like painkillers and sleeping pills. Muscle relaxants. So he goes for his first meeting with Vince McMahon. It's obviously a huge opportunity to like make it in the business. Unfortunately, Darren slash William is not exactly in tip-tock nick and in the meeting he falls asleep fully passes out and his head just smacks onto the desk everyone's just like oh god i feel like vince would have liked that yeah you think i think he was like this guy's clearly yeah a mess he did eventually get clean although not without the odd slip up so he revealed in his book that he was once arrested on a flight from japan to america after getting drunk and urinating on a flight attendant and he said he was so drunk his only memory was waking up in jail in anchorage in alaska um although two years ago he he clarified that actually all that happened was he was in the loo the flight attendant knocked on the door and he spun around in surprise and pissed on her shoe right not sure i believe him yeah you said you didn't remember it though um so yeah he i never realized that he had a sort of like wild wild past yeah because he failed a drugs test in 2009 and denied he taken drugs and when they were like what's your excuse?

11:47He was like, that amount of dose wouldn't have touched the sides for me. He said it would be like a sausage up an alleyway.

11:56That's exactly how all the landed gentry speak. Moving on, I guess a big part of the attitude era was also increased violence. You know, people being thrown off the top of cages, smacked with steel chairs. It's a really famous match from this era where it's Mick Foley against The Undertaker in a cage match where it all yeah it's pretty brutal i think he accidentally chokeslams him through a cage yeah yeah that's worth a watch if you've not seen it doesn't hurt himself i think i think he really hurts himself the first time and then he does it again like it's again um but yeah um they also wwf also introduced hardcore championship in 1998 so weapons yeah no disqualifications no tap outs people are using steel chairs trash cans kendo sticks i like it when they tie barbed wire around something yeah yeah because there's a lot of blood bleeding's kind of always been a thing it's blading right so discreetly you'll take yourself a little razor blade to yourself do a little nick and then you'll start bleeding and people will think it's from the impact of something but now outlaw doesn't it yeah you don't need to do that when um you wrap wrap steel barbed wire around something around a baseball bat um but yeah so it's starting to get more extreme tragedy was kind of inevitable um so yeah 1999 owen hart um due to be lowered 80 feet in a harness into the ring um and the quick release is accidentally activated um and he yeah fell onto the ring ropes and was killed in front of a live audience which is obviously very horrible he didn't even cancel the show i know that they just play on absolutely insane i mean so bret hart was already uh not a fan of vince mcmahon because the montreal screw job this is bret hart's brother obviously um yeah after this yeah all quite horrible they ended up paying um owen's wife 18 million dollars in a lawsuit but they kind of just smoothed over it didn't they it was just like yeah that was a tragedy but it wasn't like yeah i mean they kind of do that a lot eddie guerrero like amazing wrestler he sadly passed away out of the ring and then the next wrestlemania which i think is a couple of months later like one of the other wrestlers is like eddie guerrero is down in hell and using it to get like yeah it's awful like it's absolutely insane um i mean when chris benoit died and did the bad thing they um they initially just heard he died and broadcast a three-hour tribute special to him and then like four hours later they're like you know he killed his entire family hold your horses yeah just get that tribute off the youtube channel um on a lighter note one of the fan favorites of the attitude era was the godfather who uh people remember for the whole train which is him walking around with a trail of yeah hose he's a pimp it was of the time yeah he was a pimp character so he he was originally a horror themed voodoo character called papa shango i think based on that james bond villain baron samedy yeah is that yeah it absolutely bombed everyone was like this is fucking shit so in 98 he switches to become the godfather considered one of the most popular like more novelty characters of all time so he's a pimp he's got his hoe train let's watch him enter the ring

15:12so he's in a sort He's in a pimp outfit There's no way around that

15:22I was quite keen to dress like that for this And you can't get the outfits

15:32I reckon the bloke who plays in Is in his late 40s minimum Someone holding a O-Train sign there Looked about 14 there we go it's a man pimping out his prostitutes he um one of his schticks was he would go to his opponents before matches and basically like offer them the services of his hoe train if they would forfeit the match brilliant he's a wily pimp and I do think he is the guy playing him is easily sort of 50 yeah yeah too old to be in an Amazon pimp outfit but it's actually quite a suitable character because he said that 80 % of his time off, he was in strip clubs with The Undertaker. So there you go.

16:16There's the cameo. They're basically on the road. Are they both in their outfits in the strip club? Who you prefer to give a dance to to give his Undertaker lying down? I think the fear with The Undertaker, if you saw him in a strip club, is if you don't know about wrestling and you think that's an actual Undertaker, it's quite creepy. Yeah, it's very creepy. Whereas, you know, there's probably blokes dressed as the godfather in strip clubs, sure. Periodically. Apparently, he would recruit strippers to his hoe train that's how he would staff the hoe train he'd just be like you'd have thought someone at the WDU would do that for him I think it's again it's part of the carnival thing like they're obviously a travelling act going around the country and then they're refusing to pay for a permanent hoe train so he's got to everywhere he goes he's got to quickly go to the strip club and recruit he says that the character was his wife's idea I don't believe him he was also a massive stoner so D 'Lo Brown do you remember him he said that the first time he smoked weed with the Godfather he was so high that he wrestled in Toronto and crossed the international border twice without any memory of any of it he briefly rebranded as the Goodfather and joined the Right to Censor so they were like a piss take at the Parents Television Council which was like a anti anti-attitude era yeah it was like a Christian bloke who just thought TV was getting too raunchy which i mean maybe he had a point he is leo brent bozel the third and he's now ambassador to south africa oh really american ambassador and his son leo brent bozel the fourth was arrested for taking part in the january 6th storming of the capitol right yeah and he was part of the parental advisory board i don't want swearing on monday night raw but by all means storm our organization's capital yeah when you put on your furs and your little horn helmet and storm the capital please don't swear please don't say fuck or bugger yeah um so their gimmick right to center was they would like cover up scantily clad women and remove the weapons from hardcore matches it was good it was good gimmick what yeah was it i think he that sort of ended his career it's kind of and he came back as the godfather but then in later appearances he he stopped having the ho train because he said times have changed right probably true although after leaving professional wrestling he moved to las vegas where he managed the cheetahs strip club but he knew what he liked still has a ho train actually um yeah so i mean even outside of godfather's ho train and vince mcmahon trying to uh sleep with his daughter it was you know wwf in the late 90s was it was bawdy um so this is you know this is the diva era as well they call it which i mean even the word diva for which was just your female wrestlers it's it's a yeah it's horny it's well and it's also yeah what is it diva it sort of implies like a bit uptight oh yeah well you won't get maintenance yeah yeah which wrestlers are oh you're not gonna get your tits out in front of a live tv audience Diva.

19:26Diva. Yeah, I don't know. It's all a bit horrible, isn't it? Well, loved it at the time. Bet you did. But I was 13. Yeah. So there was already Valet's Sonny, Sable, and Debra. Debra's Stone Cold's wife, isn't she? IRL. Yeah, I think so. I was. I was. And then, yeah, they start, I think Vince sort of encourages them to do like Playboy spreads and Lads Mag stuff. They had their own Lads Mag, Raw magazine. Really? Yeah. Yeah. um and then yeah trish stratus we've already mentioned she debuts in 2000 she was like really good at wrestling i think but didn't have too many people to actually wrestle um followed by your leaders your tory wilson's stacy keeblers that's all coming back to me now but none was iconic as 77 year old may young um so may young was a an absolute legend of wrestling she was big in the 40s was wrestling throughout World War II one of the first female performers to tour post-war Japan in the 50s and in 1999 she joined the WWF for her in-ring debut how old was she?

20:40she was I think 77, she was in her 70s wasn't she a tag team with another female wrestler from that era, the Fabulous Moolah Fabulous Moolah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you might think, oh, it's kind of a novelty. Maybe she's brought in as a manager and stuff. She was still taking bumps in her 70s. And there was one period where she got powerbombed for a table two weeks in a row, age 77. Got a clip? Yeah, we got a clip. Oh, thank God. Papa Ray Dudley's pulling her by the hair. Oh, it's off the top rope as well. Don't do that. For God's sake.

21:26I mean, obviously, you know, it's a, it's sports entertainment and all that, but like surely she could have been seriously injured. Yeah, it's not her. She must know how to, I mean, she's been wrestling for - She's a pro. She knows what she's doing. 40 years at this point. Yeah. How do you do that and not like - Break a hip. Yeah. It just instantly turns to dust. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense. She also takes part in a swimsuit contest around that time where she flashes her boobs. Oh, yeah. Got a clip of that as well. All my fans out here wants to see my puppies. And they're going to get to see my puppies.

22:03Wait a minute, May. I don't know if everybody wants to see your puppies. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You got to be kidding, May. Hold on, May. Who told you that everybody wanted to see your puppies? Take it easy.

22:18She's just flossing with her The gown Floss through the legs So she's in a swimsuit now

22:31It's so drawn out He's just fallen over in shock There we go Probably for the best I did While I was looking for the video on Google Images There is an uncensored version there's so many kids in the audience I think it was it was faked right and I think there is also where Jerry Lawler is sick

22:57you gotta say good sport great sport is Mae Young she's a good sport none more so than when she agreed to do a storyline with Mark Henry aka sexual chocolate so weren't they they were trying to force Mark Henry out of his massive contract yeah by giving him these like ridiculous storylines he was a really successful bodybuilder he weighed 105 kilos when he was nine mark henry yeah so he wild he yeah i think they put him on a massive contract because vince loves big strong boys yeah he does i think he's i want to sort of climb on their back and just be like oh yeah but they kept then they were like this contract's too expensive let's like force him out by throwing these gimmicks at him so i think that he had to do a storyline where he's a sex addict who shags his sister he did it of course he did again not kayfabe and then they have him dating may who's still 77 at this point got a picture of them in in bed together yeah this was i watched the full video where they check into a hotel and then get into bed together and then it gets more mental again kayfabe uh may young falls pregnant with mark henry's baby age 77 she goes into labor smokes a cigar throughout and eventually gives birth to a plastic hand yeah not sure why hand yeah apparently whenever people ask why was it a hand he's just like it's a goddamn hand and cracks up it doesn't mean anything i've been hitting the head too much the clips of mark henry and may young together sort of like all over each other are quality they both really give it their all he said it was his favorite storyline he ever did in WWE.

24:36And he had a grand old time. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. She, she finished up. I think she did. She's, she took her last bumps in the ring in her eighties. Wow. She's done nine decades of wrestling and she died age 90. True. God rest her. Yeah. Actually, if you've been power bombed through a table by Bubba Ray Dudley at the age of 77, or any of your relatives have, then you might be entitled to compensation. That was an accident at work, wouldn't it? Have you been forced to get into bed with a 500 pound strongman? You don't get any compensation for that. That was your compensation. Absolute treat. Yeah.

25:15I think she probably would have grounds, Mae Young. I think she was getting paid a lot to do that. I think she wasn't getting paid enough to be power bombed for a table off the top rope. I saw all the interviews are like, she just fucking loved it. I think they're probably right. Yeah. Pioneer. anyway yeah injury law is for you if you do if you do accidentally damage your artificial hip yeah while being powerbombed at the top rope because her legs are like she's flexible yeah my friend's granny could put both legs behind her head until she was 80 how do you find that out it's only one way powerbomb it's actually the last ride in more ways than one George

26:01yeah she could do both so I guess that's a Mae Young sort of some people just have it yeah fair play I can't do it now my friend's granny was the fabulous moolah gave birth to her hand as well yeah injury noise for you for all your accidents that weren't your fault I would argue some of that was her fault and not an accident but yeah if you have been they've got a calculator on their website so you can you can work out what you might be entitled to I don't know if there is a No way, no fears. Don't think you can put in powerbombed. Yet. Yet. Gave birth to Han. She's been daughter. All right. So that Mae Young stuff, pretty mental.

26:39It still wasn't the most disgraceful skit aired during the Attitude Era. That is unanimously agreed to be the Katie Vick storyline. So the storyline is Triple H is feuding with Kane. and it is revealed that as a youngster, Kane had accidentally killed his friend, Katie Vick, in a car crash. So then Vince McMahon cooks up this skit. Even I'm confused now. That's K-phobe. That's K-phobe. That's all K-phobe, yeah. Well, I wouldn't put it past Vince. So that's all K-phobe. But Vince McMahon behind the scenes is like, okay, I think the way to sort of bring this storyline to its climax would be for Triple H to mock Kane by dressing up as him and having sex with Katie's dead body in a funeral parlor.

27:27Of course, why not? So they filmed this at a real funeral home that had an actual funeral in progress in the room next door. They're all on fucking drugs, aren't they? They must be. And apparently everyone in the company is like, this is a fucking terrible idea, apart from Vince, who, when he's got the bit between his teeth, he basically can't be talked out of anything, bar the Stephanie storyline. And so this Triple H goes ahead with it. Vince stands off camera and is constantly ordering him to moan louder as he mimics necrophilia. The mourners in the next room can't hear you. At one point, the funeral director from next door poked his head in and asked them to be quiet.

28:08Fucking hell. Trying to do a fucking funeral in here. Trying to cremate the fabulous moolah. Also, if you're just in a funeral home, sorry if you're in a crematorium or whatever and you just hear loud moaning Christ they're rising they're coming back yeah what's more surreal that walking in Triple H is giving them a fucking pedigree presumably the Undertaker was there yeah on his day job official business bit of a bossman's holiday for the Undertaker actually um all right george there's two ways we can play this i have got a clip it's pretty horrifying or i can read out the two most choice lines uh i think i'll read out the lines um triple h at one point says you know katie you feel kind of stiff and speaking of stiff and then does his trousers he also at one point remarks i love the smell of formaldehyde in the morning

29:14it's a good line and this is respected businessman triple h who's now paul of ask yeah so i tell you my mate went for a job interview at wwe this is like 10 years ago and it was sort of like to work in there sort of like growing it in europe office and they were like um all right well it's been great meeting you we just thought before you go you should meet who your boss will be if you get the job um we'll just go and get paul in comes paul of ask aka H Triple H. You know how he wears those shirts but they're so tight and the muscles are like, apparently it's just that. And he's got that floor at the neck as well.

29:47Let's watch some of the Kate Vick one. I'll link to it. Is anyone here? Hello? It's me, Kane. Kane, you might look better dead than you did alive. And then just like go in the middle of it. Like click completely round and be in the middle. I thought you'd never ask her man and then do that. I understand. I mean, honestly, just go near the end now. I hope that was as good for you as it was for me. He literally has sex with a mannequin pretending to be a corpse. For a man that was adamant he wasn't going to do it, he leans into it in the end, doesn't he? I screwed your brains out. I mean, literally.

30:31But, um, all right, that's probably it. Yeah, might be more than enough. Yeah, absolutely insane. that is bad shit apparently that is the one where university everyone in the company was like why are we doing this yeah again I'm a 40 year old man and a real funeral home yeah um not that so you know that is probably the most horrible storyline there's some others that were maybe equally bad shit slightly more fun maybe my favourite is uh the big show um who so his dad died a few a few years before in real life um and McMahon thought we can do something with this so he decides to write a storyline where the big show's dad dies during his feud with boss man um boss man shows up at the funeral blasting a loudspeaker and then toes the coffin away as big show clings onto it during his eulogy by the way the outfit's so good as well so much leather

31:34just looks like a sofa just wearing all leather to your dad's funeral

31:44he must have filmed this in a real graveyard who's letting them do this shit

32:00It's really good

32:06Surely running through Big Show's head is like this isn't very respectful. It's my dad Yes, then he he toes the coffin away as he would if you were you did with the big show you would wrap a chain

32:22What is he doing