A man often finds his destiny on the path he takes to avoid it."
Has Cody Rhodes truly been on a path to avoid destiny? Would not being on those divergent paths be destiny in and of itself?
He has been through this time and time again... He goes to the indies and wants to be the standard bearer… He goes to Bullet Club and wants to be the standard bearer… He starts his own damn company and wants to be the standard bearer.
Each time, he drives a wedge into friendships, his greed takes hold, and he suffers a crippling, ego-shattering defeat before the dream becomes a nightmare and leads him to disgrace… Sounds a bit like someone else, doesn’t it? It’s always been inevitable.
Is it a matter of will it happen again or simply a matter of when?
Many would have asked these same questions of CM Punk arriving in AEW… He blew up in Ring of Honor and in WWE long, long before he did it in AEW. Many stated the risk, many raised the warning, many pointed out the sheer audacity of him walking through that door, but we didn't listen...
You may be thinking, not a chance, Cody is such a bonafide good guy in WWE right now, he’s so over and the crowds adore him… he’s the exact opposite of the most hated man in pro wrestling! But do you not remember how before the Cody of today, it was Punk walking out to such fanfare just a year ago? It was Cody that people wished would just go away?
Eddie Kingston, Hangman Page, and even MJF – all of whom knew Cody oh so well – tried to warn us about Punk too. Either we didn’t listen, or we didn’t trust the messenger.
And we keep making the same mistake.
Roman Reigns to Cody Rhodes:
When you wake up, you're gonna have to look in the mirror.
Just what exactly would Cody see in that reflection?
Would he see what we see? That this is not two different stories but rather the same one told from two sides?
Me and Seth... this is one of the only things we agree on. We don’t want to be busting our ass this whole time, building this thing up for what it is, and just have some white knight coming sweeping in and take it from us. I’ve worked too hard, year after year, show after show, to put this place where it is. Then, here he comes. That’s just not how it works for me.
Those words, spoken by Roman Reigns on the day he defended the WWE championship from Cody Rhodes, could they not have been spoken by MJF, or Eddie Kingston, or Hangman Page?
The thing is, no matter who says it, we probably will never listen. As Malakai Black said after beating down Cody, after making him contemplate retirement in the middle of the ring:
He who speaks the truth is labeled the fool.
Cody would adopt his now-permanent Homelander attire following that Malakai beat-down on August 4, 2021, so perhaps it was a subconscious rebirth on his part, having finally faced mortality some 272 weeks after leaving the WWE.
CM Punk's own rebirth also came 272 weeks after leaving the WWE on April 19, 2019, when he ran into the ring of Silas Young's MKE Wrestling, wearing a mask, to save Ace Steel.
Little did we know what would ultimately come from that night in Milwaukee when CM Punk finally stepped into a ring again, in the same building he first met Colt Cabana, in the same city he would first appear on on Dynamite.
If men are not inherently evil, could they have done anything different? The Archangel Michael descended from Heaven into Paradise, where he showed Adam and Eve a vision of the future and the Snake that would come for them, and yet all the same they were still poisoned and corrupted. What would Michael have shown CM Punk before that fateful moment he helped a friend and returned to wrestling? Perhaps he would show him a vision of 944 days later, November 17, 2021, the night he first crossed paths with MJF and began spiraling into ruin.
At the top of this page is a quote from the first words Cody spoke to the WWE Universe upon returning:
"A man often finds his destiny on the path he takes to avoid it."
Cody insinuated he read these words, which would mean he came upon them in the works of 17th Century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. Given how doubtful that is, it's more likely he lifted them from Master Oogway in the movie Kung-Fu Panda. Master Oogway has another quote we should consider:
"There are no accidents."
Consider the number I have mentioned constantly throughout this series: 944
944 days after the Pipebomb promo, CM Punk leaves WWE.
944 days after the founding of AEW, tickets go on sale for Rampage: First Dance.
944 days after Cody’s last match in WWE is Cody’s last match before signing with AEW.
944 days before facing him at WrestleMania, Roman Reigns won the title Cody craves.
944 days before Roman claimed that title, Cody ignited the Bullet Club Civil War.
Even if we consider the palindromic of that amount to make a mirror of the number itself:
44944… The same backwards as it is forwards...
Cody Rhodes attempted to claim WWE's top prize 449 days after his contract with AEW ended.
Speaking to Ryan Satin after winning the Rumble and earning his shot at the top championship in professional wrestling, Cody said:
"I wasn’t even working here a year ago. I don’t know how we got here. There are things in my career that lined up perfectly... so perfectly. I don’t know how we got here if it doesn’t line up perfectly. I don’t believe in destiny, I don’t believe in fate, but my gosh, if there was a case study for it, it’s me.
Even the most fated journeys are still navigated by a map and Cody’s already told us where he got that map: it was the night that a pipe bomb blew open the world of professional wrestling twelve years ago. I don’t need to recount that legendary CM Punk promo again… You and I and everyone else who loves professional wrestling still know most of the words by heart.
But just in case you don’t and maybe you want to revisit it…
It’s delivered at the very end of Monday Night Raw: Episode #944.
Was that night of the first pipe bomb twelve years ago truly the genesis of this story? Have we even come close to its end? What about that brief moment he stood on the turnbuckle after winning the Rumble, looked down at his hands, kissed the Too Sweet – MUAH – and fired the revolver – BANG – before pointing to the WrestleMania sign… Was that our inflection point or maybe it's still to come at Double or Nothing, which is just around the corner?
Fate, in the Classic sense, is woven into the fabric of reality by the seamstresses. At one end are our lives and at the other end… a hand holds the thread.
If we pull on enough threads, who knows what we may find?
If the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist… What might when we discover when we know that he does?
________________________________________________________
Let's go back to the All Out media scrum, skip all the stuff that's been obsessed over already, and reexamine the overlooked conclusion where Tony Khan speaks to reporters in the press room. Having just sat through the CM Punk rant, Swerve literally putting hands on him, and Toni Storm completely throwing Thunder Rosa under the bus, he speaks to the apparent animosity within his roster.
“I think there’s still a lot of wrestlers in professional wrestling who don’t get along… now more than ever, those things are apparent. But I also think that the industry has thrived on creative tension for a long time. [At the height of the business] there was certainly a big group of pro wrestlers who didn’t like each other. A lot of times they weren’t even in the same companies and they would rip each other, and it wasn’t gonna produce a match…
But that is what we produce: wrestling matches.
There’s a lot of matches between people who don’t get along and it’s not always an easy road to get people in the ring. But when you can get people in the ring to settle their differences, it’s really exciting. And there’s a lot of people… some people even here have gone out and blatantly slammed me in public. I have a pretty calm demeanor… I’m willing to put up with a lot of abuse… but there’s only so much knocking me and slamming me I can put up with. On the other hand, I will do what’s right for business when I have to…”
Brandon Thurston asks him about the business aspect of the weekend with WWE establishing a new major event in Clash at the Castle, directly competiting with their traditional All Out weekend. Tony admits it was challenging and some of it was seemingly targeted directly to hit the AEW bottom line. Then, Tony’s general tone shifts he legitimately cuts a promo:
“I have to face the competition out there. When I compare myself to Jim Crockett promotions… This weekend, I think, I got a taste of the same medicine Jim Crockett promotions took. But I have a lot more fucking money than Jim Crockett did. I’m not gonna sit back and take this shit.”
Well... What exactly was the medicine Jim Crockett had to take?
Let's hop in our time machine and go back about forty years...
In the summer of 1984, Vince McMahon's effort to kill the pro wrestling territories and consolidate the business into one national promotion under his WWF banner finally set its sights on Atlanta.
Airing on WTBS, "Georgia Championship Wrestling" drew some of the highest ratings on cable television, and the market was a fortress in which McMahon couldn't gain an inch of ground. Realizing it wasn't a battle he could win going head-to-head, McMahon bought out their historic 6:05pm Saturday night time-slot and replaced the programming with his own, an event referred to thereafter as "Black Saturday".
Ole Anderson and his allies scrambled and got back on TV, albeit with a tough time-slot in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Jim Crockett in Charlotte and Harley Race in Kansas City sent top talent to help out, and the promotion limped along for months barely on life support... but, it wasn't dead just yet.
As all this was happening, WWF's ratings on TBS tanked right from the start, with fans furious at the change and even protesting outside Ted Turner's studios in Atlanta. Disagreements between McMahon and Turner came to a head, and eventually all parties involved agreed that Crockett would buy all the time-slots for wrestling on TBS (Bill Watts had even gotten on the station briefly) and the old Georgia territory merged into Mid-Atlantic.
On April 6, 1985, Crockett Promotions debuted in the 6:05 Saturday night window, with Tony Schiavone welcoming fans to a new era. McMahon retreated from the heart of the South, but following the overwhelming success of that year's first WrestleMania, WWF was fully prepared to go head on against the momentum of JCP.
The stark contrast between the two different promotions – WWF’s larger-than-life characters embroiled in high drama but straightforward matches, Crockett’s roster of grounded characters having blood feuds in athletic showcases – offered something for both sides of the wrestling fandom, but the companies themselves could not coexist… War was inevitable.
Leading up to Starrcade 1985, Crockett was on fire. Anchored by Ric Flair vs Dusty Rhodes at the top of the card, the real momentum came from the red-hot feud between Dusty’s protege – Magnum TA –and the vile, dastardly Tully Blanchard, over the latter’s NWA United States Championship. All throughout the year, Magnum and Tully had increasingly escalated their rivalry to the point that it could only be settled in brutal fashion. On Thanksgiving night, 11/28/85, at the biggest event of the year for JCP and the NWA as a whole, those two men stepped into a steel cage for an “I Quit” match, the very first of its kind. What followed was arguably the greatest and most impactful match in the history of Starrcade.
Magnum, the NWA’s hottest rising star, stepped into that cage as a white meat babyface. When he stepped out, he had been pushed so far and had to go to such dark places, the lines between who's good and who's bad were much more blurred than they’d ever been. It was brutal stuff that had never been done on such a big stage and has barely been replicated since. Over the course of fifteen minutes there's essentially no wrestling moves but rather a pure fight, closer to a barroom brawl than an athletic competition.
Toward the end, Tully's wife throws a wooden chair over the cage and into the ring and he smashes it. He picks up a piece that splintered into a spike and tries to shove it in Magnum’s eye. Magnum escapes, picks up a shard with a nail sticking out, and jams it into Tully's forehead until he gives up. It was a masterpiece of violence and truly shocking in its time. This match came to be cited as the one you show people who don't watch wrestling to make them ask, "Wait… this is fake… right?"
Magnum jamming the nail in Tully's forehead as he screams
Already incredibly over, after the cage match Magnum TA seemed fast-tracked for superstardom, and hopes were that he would become the NWA’s answer to McMahon’s cash cow Hulk Hogan. In this 26-year-old, they had a man with movie-star good looks who could cut a damn fine promo and work a hell of a match. He was to become the new archetype for the wrestling babyface: a good man that ain’t afraid to fight dirty. The fans ate it up. As 1985 came to a close the top villains of NWA seemed to be on the ropes, but instead of giving up, they consolidated into one of pro wrestling’s most important groups: The Four Horsemen, who would wreak havoc throughout the nation and hold an iron grip on the NWA’s top titles.
In 1986, Magnum prepared to defend his US title against Nikita Koloff and Crockett arranged a contract signing. At the signing, Koloff insulted Magnum’s mother who was in attendance. Enraged, Magnum attacked Koloff and earned a public reprimand from NWA President Bob Geigel. Magnum became even more furious, and punched Geigel, who then stripped him of the championship.
Afterward, the belt was put up for grabs in a landmark Best-of-Seven series, during which Koloff stormed out to a 3-0 lead before Magnum rallied to tie it up. In the deciding seventh match, while Koloff’s uncle Ivan distracted the referee, Nikita clocked Magnum with a chain to secure the win and the championship.
Their series did great business during that summer’s Great American Bash, and Magnum was penciled into reclaiming his championship in a deciding blow-off match before starting a run toward Ric Flair's NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Everything was lining up for him to become the megastar JCP needed in their war against McMahon… until October 14, 1986.
That night, while Magnum was driving in the rain, his Porsche lost grip of the road and wrapped around a telephone pole, smashing his spine and leaving the right half of his body paralyzed. Had it not been for his tremendous physical conditioning, Magnum likely would have died. Dusty Rhodes, who had taken Magnum him under his wing to mentor just as Billy Graham had done for the Dream a decade earlier, who had named him the godfather to his newborn son Cody just a year earlier, had to manage the concern for his protege while simultaneously shredding the long-laid plans of the NWA, for which he was serving as head booker.
While the star who should have been the face of the NWA and all professional wrestling outside the WWF struggled to simply stand up and walk a few feet, Vince McMahon scored his greatest triumph with the resounding success of WrestleMania III in March of 1987. All momentum went behind the northern promotion and they smelled blood in the water. In advance of that Thanksgiving’s Starrcade, which JCP was counting on to bolster their finances during a difficult year, McMahon strong armed the television companies into exclusively offering his new pay-per-view event, Survivor Series, on Thanksgiving night.
It was a gut punch that hit Crockett and the NWA when they could least afford to take one, but it didn’t kill them outright. As the year rolled over to 1988, Crockett and Dusty pulled a trick out of their sleeves and, just as Magnum would’ve done, went eye-for-an-eye using McMahon’s own move against him.
Magnum, despite having to retire from wrestling, had been accompanying Dusty to the ring as he battled against the Horsemen to the delight and the raucous cheers of fans just happy to see him up and walking. The problem, however, was that he wasn’t much good in a fight while still unable to use his right arm. And so on March 26, 1988, he arrived at the arena with a baseball bat slung over his shoulder, dubbed his “Equalizer”. David Crockett pulled him aside for an interview where Magnum spoke about his fighting spirit and recounted his greatest triumph: the “I Quit” match from three years earlier against Horseman member Tully Blanchard.
Well, Tully didn’t much like him bringing that up. He marched to ringside and got in Magnum’s face, started calling him a liar, saying he never said, “I quit!”. While technically true (Blanchard shrieked “YES!” into the microphone when asked to submit inside the steel cage), the whole world had seen Blanchard’s greatest defeat that night. Tully crossed every line possible, mocking Magnum’s car accident, accusing him of playing it up for sympathy, of lying about things to line his own pockets.
Barry Windham, longtime friend and ally to Dusty and Magnum, came out to diffuse the situation and was immediately greeted by a sucker punch from Blanchard. Then, to the shock of the audience, Tully slapped the still half-paralyzed Magnum after which the Horsemen’s manager, JJ Dillon, pulled him to the ground. While Dillon stomped on Windham, Tully focused his attention on his defenseless former rival. In a disturbing scene, Blanchard stood over his crippled foe prepared to do the unthinkable.
Suddenly, out stormed Dusty Rhodes with a baseball bat of his own and he starts unloading on Tully and Dillon, vicious and wild swings with no regard for collateral damage. The backstage personnel, from Schiavone and Jim Ross to even Jim Crockett himself, all flood toward ringside to pull them apart but Dusty can’t be stopped. Crockett hops on Dusty’s back to try and stop him, but it's all to no avail.
That night in Charlotte remains one of the greatest works in wrestling history.
The camera feed cuts out momentarily, but when it comes back the melee is STILL ongoing, and Dusty knocks Jim Crockett square in the mouth with the bat before he gets back to Tully, takes him down, and chokes him with the baseball bat for an unnerving length of time. It takes half the locker room to pry Dusty Rhodes off Tully Blanchard, but the implication is clear: if it had taken any longer, there would have been a murder on live television.
An emergency meeting of the NWA's board of directors was convened, where they decided to strip Dusty of the NWA United States title he was holding and suspend him indefinitely. At the meeting, Dusty apologized to the Crockett family but refused to do the same to Tully Blanchard and JJ Dillon.
Dusty's suspension ultimately came out to 120 days.
The violent ringside melee got EVERYONE buzzing (even the local Charlotte evening news ran a story), putting force behind Crockett and Dusty’s real-life counter-punch to Vince the following night: the inaugural "Clash of the Champions".
It ran on TBS in direct opposition to WrestleMania IV, popped a huge 5.6 cable rating, and in one night created a generational superstar when Sting wrestled Ric Flair in the main event. WWF’s biggest show of the year was a major disappointment and a financial flop, and after months of defeat the NWA and JCP had finally pulled off a win against their enemy.
Unfortunately it would be one of their final few victories, as Dusty's booking lost steam ["The Midnight Rider was an all-time terrible creative choice] and Crockett Promotions became desperately strapped for cash. They wound up being sold to Ted Turner before year's end and becoming WCW... which will matter in this story at another time...
Doesn't a lot of this all sound strangely familiar?
Similarity is one thing, but what's it got to do with Khan's statements at All Out, and AEW storylines in general?
Well, if you’ve read my anthology on the mirror reflection of CM Punk and Magnum TA’s godson Cody Rhodes, you’ll know that everyone involved in that story, from Cody and Punk to Hangman and MJF extensively use allusions to wrestling history to enrich their stories, do a lot of foreshadowing, and point you directly toward where things are going.
Everyone involved love nothing more than hinting at where things are going, dropping clues about what's to come.
I know, I know... your internal voice is screaming out "IT'S NOT A WORK!". So is mine, and it has been from the beginning of this whole process. But if we put aside our need to be "smart" about the business and just ask questions, some of the answers are very intriguing. With wrestling in particular and life in general, it's okay to be wrong! It affects absolutely no one if this all amounts to a hill of beans. But if you'll give me just a bit more of your time, let me ask a few more questions, I expect the ride will be pretty fun.
So, my first question is:
Surely they didn't plan this out months in advance, right?
After Khan cut his promo about Jim Crockett, the All Out scrum pool gave him a question about the events at the start of the interview:
“You see without a doubt your biggest star, your biggest mainstream attraction… He goes off the rails a bit toward your EVPs and another of your big young stars. You, as the leader of the ship, how do you diffuse the situation?”
Tony Khan:
“That is a dicey situation. It is contentious and frankly challenging. But, I have to do what’s best for the sake of the company. Everybody you’re talking about are great wrestlers with big reputations… Some of them have been around from the beginning of the company. Some have been around for about a year now… The fact is, these are people that drive revenue, and they help create jobs for everyone. I’m not gonna comment on what you heard here tonight, but like I said earlier this week… It’s no secret that a lot of professional wrestlers don’t like each other...
But I don’t think that’s a bad thing for the pro wrestling business given the product that we produce: matches.”
Well, Cody Rhodes talked with Barstool's "Wrasslin'" podcast nine months earlier, right at the start of the year before wrestling his final match in AEW. He dropped this nugget:
I think 2022 really leans into what you mentioned earlier in terms of all those free agents, all the Originals, all the Pillars... I think we're really setting up for a year-long battle royal... A year-long, incredibly tumultuous, battle royal of 'Oh, well I came from WWE and I never watched your product but I'm super over'... or 'I've been here the whole time!'.
Both opinions are entitled and annoying, but they make for great wrestling.
Cody's words outline the general direction of the company for 2022, early 2023, maybe even some overarching feuds, but there's nothing specifically alluding to Brawl Out, right?
Well, that came five months before the scrum, on BTE 300...
The Hardy's start that benchmark episode by chastising the Bucks for dodging them:
Do you guys even wrestle anymore or are you just EVPs now? Couple of pre-tape wrestlers, politicking backstage all day, trying to get a 'Cody deal'?
Kenny, who's on the mend recovering from multiple surgeries, watches an episode of Dynamite and is appalled at the quality. He buries the product and says to "put the old stuff on".
At the end of the BTE episode, Matt & Nick ambush Adam Cole in his dressing room.
In an altercation spanning exactly six minutes (the same oddly specific length of time Fightful reported Brawl Out to have lasted), the Bucks fight 2-on-1 to pry away their BTE title belt: "The Only Shoot Championship in Wrestling".
Yes, there's even a bite.
Fed up with the grotesque brutality, Adam Cole calls a timeout.
Cole:
Guys! What are we doing?? What are we thinking??? This is a special episode of BTE!
Nick:
I'm on the sell big time.
Cole:
What's wrong with us??
Matt:
You're right... We can do this in 150 episodes... Just for fun...
CM Punk's shoot on Hangman came during Dynamite episode #150, same night Kenny Omega returned after close to a year away...
Cole continues:
Right? This is a really special BTE and BTE is about friendship, the love for each other, and all the years we spent together.
Nick:
Why would we have a bloodbath match here, right now?
[Nick looks at the camera]
Why would we do that? Why have a bloodbath here?
Good question, Nick... Why would they do that?
Well, back on BTE 200, the Bucks had a ridiculous Brother vs Brother match, played the "Sad Hangman" music, and teased the arrival of FTR who would sow division between Hangman and the Elite... all of which played out in the weeks and months after that episode.
Even further back on BTE 100, Cody finally executed his plan to take control of Bullet Club by driving a wedge between Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks. Once his mission is accomplished he realizes it wasn't worth it since he's all alone at the top, having alienated everyone close to him, and forecasting his egotistical isolation and self-destruction in the coming months...
The closing shot of BTE 100 is kinda familiar, eh?
Okay, so maybe these hyper-specific things are coincidences in three landmark episodes spread over several years... there's nothing that addresses all the drama around management and the locker room environment, right?
Well... after weeks of getting jerked around, Matt Hardy asked the Bucks for an apology on BTE 297 and they laugh in his face.
Nick:
"An apology? For god's sakes, who do you think we are? We're the Young Bucks. We apologize to no one, not even living legends!
Matt:
We don't apologize, we just put out cold-hearted tweets... We're very disingenuous! That's kinda what we do.
Nick:
That's our real-life character right there.
Brandon, ever the voice of truth, chimes in:
Yeah... you guys are kinda power hungry...
Matt gets angry and covers the camera with his hand.
Brandon, why don't you shut your freakin' mouth right now!
Turn off the camera! Kayfabe! Kayfabe!
Okay... but is Kenny Omega even involved in this at all? How'd he get dragged into it?
He's a certified locker room leader... He was gone almost a whole year before the stuff that caused Brawl Out!
Kenny, on BTE 269, five days before Rampage: First Dance...
We got about 300 guys back here... can't do shit, haven't amounted to anything, and will never be a superstar!
75% of this roster is from WWE and you know what that automatically means? That they failed at some real sport. They failed there AND at their sport of choice!
You guys playing on our court? Big hot shots, huh? You guys thought you were something big in WWE, now coming in my house, trying to invade my promotion!?
But if Punk isn't even in the company yet, how can we be 100% certain that's who he's referencing?
BTE 270: CM PUNK
______________________________________________________
"Everything has already been done, every story has been told, every scene has been shot. It’s our job to do it one better." - Stanley Kubrick
Again, the most curious parts of the All Out media scrum come well after Punk’s tumultuous time at the podium, when hands that haven’t yet been played start being tipped. As he sits beside close confidante Chris Jericho, an AEW co-founder in all but name, Tony Khan gives us another plot-point on the map.
“Jon [Moxley] and Chris… I think of them almost like our Sting and Ric Flair, guys that have been there since the beginning that I can always count on, the first two champions of the company. Then the Lionheart thing, they showed that photo…
“... I was there in 1996 when that photo was taken… Do you know what they chanted when Chris left?
They chanted, ‘You sold out!’, and Chris was the best young babyface in the world… I was holding a sign that said ‘CHRIS JERICHO IS THE BEST WRESTLER IN THE WORLD’.
It's funny, I actually had another sign… ‘SHANE HEARTS SHAWN’... but that’s another story…”
Well that story is quite interesting, so let’s hop in our time machine once again and set the dial to 1995.
“The Franchise” Shane Douglas was one of the best young prospects of the early decade and his potential seemed limitless. He had originally been in WWF in 1990, where he made a name for himself filling in for the injured Shawn Michaels as Marty Janetty’s tag partner in The Rockers. Before his career truly took off, however, Douglas stepped away from wrestling full-time to care for his ailing father. He intermittently appeared for WCW, then ECW, where he finally became a top guy for bookers to build their cards around.
When he returned to WWE in 1995, Michaels, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and eventually Paul Levesque were in the process of consolidating their control over backstage politics and becoming tyrannical in the locker room. Michaels, seeing his potential, invited Shane Douglas into the fold. Considering the group overly childish, Douglas declined. After rejecting Michaels and The Kliq, the rest of his tenure in WWE was continually sabotaged. HBK vowed never to do the job against him, not even when Douglas was slated for a push with the Intercontinental Championship.
Douglas later said of Michaels:
"He had run his mouth when I was in Germany in the dressing room three weeks prior, saying he was going to embarrass me on national television. I said to Davey Boy Smith… if he tries to embarrass me on national TV, I'll stretch him... Almost within hours, I get the call that the finish has been changed and that Shawn has had a relapse of his concussion and can't perform...
That's Shawn.
"He's afraid of his own shadow. Not that I'm the toughest guy in the world, but I've always been very passionate about it. If you have a problem with me, we can just as easily go outside to settle it or we can settle it like professionals. It really doesn't matter to me. But if you go out and make a statement in front of the dressing room, saying you're going to embarrass me, then you can expect there to be a response to that.”
Douglas left the company the following year after Vince was infuriated that he wouldn't wrestle at the big Madison Square Garden show, despite a doctor explicitly telling him that if he worked through his injury he was at risk of paralysis.
This real-life drama centering around and emanating from the Kliq would become prevalent over the next few years. Although quite a scandal at the time and setting the tone for what was to come, it wasn’t even close to the most controversial Kliq incident at MSG that year.
May 19, 1996, would eventually be referred to as “The Day That Kayfabe Died”, but it started out as just a house show. At the time, Nash and Hall were leaving the WWF for Ted Turner's WCW. In the main event, Michaels faced Nash in a steel cage match, and Triple H and Ramon interfered on behalf of their respective allies.
After the match, as Nash and Hall began leaving the ring, Michaels and Triple H came back out to celebrate with them. For decades, heels and faces were strictly kept separate and not shown fraternizing with each other in public. The four wrestlers hugged inside the cage in front of tens of thousands of fans, unabashedly exposing the nature of the sport.
The "Curtain Call" wasn't shown on television, but it was captured on video by fans in attendance and later circulated widely on VHS tape and eventually online. It created a firestorm among fans and within the industry. A minority considered it a human moment showing the camaraderie that existed between wrestlers behind the scenes. From the locker room to the production truck, however, the common sentiment was that The Kliq had disrespected the business and betrayed the trust of the fans.
Triple H was the fall guy for the entire fiasco as two of the culprits left the company and Michaels was the WWF Champion. One week later, Scott Hall hopped the barricade at WCW Monday Nitro in Macon, Georgia (the same city to which Ole Anderson and GCW retreated over a decade earlier when McMahon forced them off TBS) and officially reignited a war that had lain dormant for years.
"You know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here."
Jim Crockett landed his final counterpunch to the WWF in 1988 before throwing in the towel, but WCW was a real contender landing a real body blow. Excitement coursed through the fandom as, for the first time in a long time, no one knew what to expect next. Nash began disrupting Nitro shows with Hall, the WCW roster became a snakepit of distrust in which longtime veterans accused each other of being in league with the Outsiders, and the intrigue reached a fever pitch with fan interest skyrocketing.
Unfortunately for Vince, the source of most of that electricity was in Atlanta. The ace of the WWF and its loyal company-man, Bret Hart, even began considering jumping to their rival, but McMahon was able to keep him with an unheard-of 20-year contract. In October, Hart announced this deal live in the ring, cutting a rare shoot promo where he openly discussed his negotiations with Eric Bischoff while putting over WWF as his permanent home.
Or so he thought.
Despite strong feuds pitting the Harts against Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels against the Undertaker, WCW spent a year beating McMahon at the box office, on television, and on pay-per-view. With the prospect of losing even more stars to his competition, McMahon came to view Hart’s massive contract as an albatross he would have to match when it came time to negotiate with others. Vince told Bret he was going to break the deal and that he should take an offer from Bischoff, which he did and was scheduled to begin on December 1st, 1997.
There was one major problem, however: Bret Hart was still the champ. As Survivor Series approached and his deal with WCW drew near, he refused to drop the title to Michaels in Canada. After a decade in the company, he was disgusted by Michael’s ego and treatment of other wrestlers with the backing of his cronies and the enabling of Vince. On the record and quite often in later years, Bret Hart frequently described the Kliq as “literally a locker room cancer” and would not suffer the indignity of coronating their leader in front of his home fans.
Vince grew increasingly paranoid that Hart would take the title to WCW and obliterate the WWF's credibility. Thus, on the night of November 9, 1997, as Hart and Michaels squared off in Montreal, McMahon – flanked by all his stooges – instructed referee Earl Hebner to ring the bell and declare Michaels the winner of the match, even though Hart had not actually submitted or been pinned. A year and a half earlier, the WWF was incensed by The Kliq breaking "kayfabe", but it was this night where the company itself put a torch to the concept. To this day, the “Montreal Screwjob” remains the most controversial, discussed, and dissected moment in professional wrestling history.
The Hitman was of course outraged, feeling betrayed and disrespected on the deepest level. He spat in McMahon's face and destroyed ringside equipment in a fit of anger. Bret Hart’s final act in the WWF, as we would learn in the coming days, was throwing a haymaker upon seeing the leader of the company standing in his locker room as he emerged from the shower.
As with everything we’ve discussed in this series… Doesn’t it all seem familiar?
When “The Last Survivor of Stu Hart’s Dungeon” muttered into Tony Khan’s ear that “Some shit went down in the back” directly in front of reporters, cameras, and a live mic, our minds would inevitably race back to that night in 1997. Looking closely, all along they had been conditioning us to expect it with locker room brawls fresh out of the shower... and even a screwjob finish.
So much of what we’ve talked about – what many of the key players have talked about – pertains to destiny and fate. But the Montreal Screwjob was not a death knell for WWF as many thought it was fated to be, just as Brawl Out was not remotely a nail in the coffin of AEW. Respective eras had already turned over into new ones that could not only weather those storms, but possibly even grow from them. The mid-90s was the most salacious era of professional wrestling, and today is the most self-aware.
As Shawn Michaels said back then:
“Do not confuse expansion with destruction.”
Those words, delivered to Bret Hart to justify and glorify his Kliq, came on Monday Night Raw back on October 6, 1997, a month before the Screwjob. Those words, in a deluge of insider lingo from the longest worked-shoot promo ever delivered on television at that point, capped the most significant week of programming in WWF history. Those words came the night after Michaels and the Undertaker delivered their landmark Hell in a Cell match, after the arrival of Kane, immediately after Bret Hart first declared HBK and his cronies to be “degenerates”.
Those words came seven days after the historic Monday Night Raw of September 29, 1997, which only grows more in significance as the years pass by. Sadly, that night was the last we ever saw Brian Pillman. That was the night the Kliq first began shooting about themselves on the mic and mocked McMahon about the Curtain Call at MSG a year prior. As for Vince himself, well, sure he was embarrassed at MSG the previous year, but also on the previous episode of Raw, taped the day earlier. That was the show where he took his first ever Stone Cold Stunner. But it was on this night when the great villain of wrestling’s next decade was truly born.
Sept. 29, 1997, an iconic template was set.
For weeks, Vince had refused to let Steve Austin wrestle after his neck injury at SummerSlam, and he vacated Austin's Intercontinental Championship. Increasingly frustrated, Austin escalated tensions with McMahon, who seemed to genuinely be concerned for the Rattlesnake’s wellbeing… until Austin finally attacked him under the bright lights of the world’s most famous arena.
It was on September 29th that McMahon told the world he finally had enough:
“You are either a certifiable lunatic, or you just don’t give a damn. Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn anymore either. I’ve allowed WWF officials to be placed in a position of jeopardy, and all because I tried to protect you from yourself. No more. No more. It stops right now.”
Austin:
“It sounds like you’re trying to lay down the law with Steve Austin… If you wanna fire me, go ahead and fire me, big shot. I really and truly don’t give a rat's ass what you do!”
Vince gives him three options: the first, provide a medical clearance form stating Austin is at full health; second, provide a legal document absolving the WWF of liability if he gets injured; or the third…
“I will do what I’ve gotta do… in terms of… termination.”
Well, Austin took that about as well as you'd expect from him, and after a few more curse words and a couple of middle fingers their relationship was clearly no longer salvageable.
The most crucial aspect was McMahon changing how their animosity was sourced from Austin being his own worst enemy and reframing it to Austin being the company’s worst enemy. Once that became the dynamic, where Austin stood as the unyielding nemesis of WWF and its figurehead, after Montreal it meant he'd become wrestling’s biggest hero.
Initiating the Austin/McMahon feud proved to be Vince’s trump card in his war with WCW, a war that had kicked off in full when old prize horse, Hulk Hogan, joined with Hall & Nash to form the New World Order 449 days earlier at WCW Bash at the Beach.
It’s no surprise that comparisons would come, from Cody Rhodes, from Tony Khan, and from wrestling fans at large, who felt Punk’s return match at All Out 2021 – coupled with the arrival of Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson in AEW that same night – might be a spark similar to Bash '96. What is surprising, however, is how Punk himself felt:
“I’m not Hogan, I’m not Savage… Daniel Bryan and Adam Cole are not the Outsiders.
To me, this is bigger.”
When following up on his prediction a year later at the same event, square in the middle of his now infamous rant, he said:
“Look, I know it sounds like a pretty ridiculous statement, but in five years, I think you’ll see the impact of it.”
Isn’t it interesting that CM Punk would say such a thing in the middle of a press conference where he turned AEW on its head?
Of course, he was speaking from an understanding that pro wrestling in general and his contemporaries specifically have broken new ground by subverting history…
Like when Adam Cole received an intricately plotted farewell from the Super Kliq...
… and by pushing stories beyond their previous limits…
CM Punk and Tyler Black threaten to leave ROH with the world championship, but fail; Punk escapes WWE with the world championship, but only briefly; Kenny Omega steals the AEW title, takes it to Impact, claims theirs, then adds a few more to his collection in the months afterward.
But to do something even bigger than in those legendary days of 1996 and 1997 when professional wrestling caught fire like never before and never since, what would it take? The ambitions that have been laid on the table are in no way humble.
Another man arrived in the background of those Raw tapings from the final week of September 1997, and though his time in the WWF was brief, the lessons he learned became motives and actions two decades later.
At Winter is Coming 2020, Don Callis – the Vice President of Impact Wrestling – helped Kenny Omega steal the AEW championship from Jon Moxley, then declared they were taking it to another show. What they did was what Vince feared so long ago, what he feared so much he betrayed Bret Hart on live television, in a moment of infamy that hasn't lessened over 25 years later. “The Invisible Hand” took a rightful victory lap, swimming in the buzz and the uncertainty of what might possibly come next.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, he challenged us to think bigger…
Callis:
“Kenny and I have a lot of plans and what people are seeing on national television are the fruition of things. We take great pride in the fact that when people think they’ve seen the apex of it… we do something different and take it to the next level.”
CVV:
“I think fans have this idea in the world of wrestling that they think they have an idea what’s going on, and you’ve turned that on its head.”
Callis:
"I have no interest in the wrestling business in terms of tradition. I don’t care about matches, I don’t care about ratings. I care about making history, frankly. Kenny and I have changed history a couple of times now and we’re not done. There’s more to come.
CVV:
When you first got into the business, what were your goals in pro wrestling?
Callis:
If you were to look at promos I did in WWF in 1997… I was a total unknown. My first promo on Raw was not calling out a wrestler, I called out Vince McMahon. I said that I wanted to run the World Wrestling Federation. I wanted to run the wrestling business… I never had an interest in being a manager. I wanted to be the person pulling the strings… I don’t think the time was right. Vince McMahon was not a guy who was going to allow other people into the tent… That’s always been the goal.
CVV:
Well this may be a little bit of foreshadowing… You say you wanna be the guy behind the scenes pulling the strings. You are the guy pulling the strings at Impact Wrestling.
Callis:
I don’t like to limit it just to Impact Wrestling. The Invisible Hand has had a role in shaping-- What Kenny Omega and I have done is what everyone has been talking about for weeks now. We did it last night on Dynamite, we put the Bullet Club back together. No one thought that could happen. The Invisible Hand hasn’t stopped. The Invisible Hand doesn’t do this for accolades or ratings. I do it so we can change the business and shock people… I see the whole industry as the sandbox of Don Callis and Kenny Omega. We’ve taken some criticism for saying we're Gods among insects… We just think on a completely different, higher level.
Most people think week-to-week, show-to-show: what are we gonna do to pop a rating or who got over on a show… Kenny and I don’t care about those things. We really are thinking on a different plane… One thing we’ve tried to show people is, don’t limit your thinking. I love when people talk about “dream matches”... It’s so pathetic. Dreaming small. “Oh, I’d love to see this match…” Ugh. Dream bigger.
CVV asks Callis about his time in ECW as “Cyrus the Virus”. Callis explains how he had legitimate heat with Paul Heyman for going outside of the promotion and approaching TNN about other endeavors when ECW didn’t have a good relationship with the network. Callis actually got very close with network executives and people backstage didn’t like it. Heyman and Callis decided to turn it into an angle that got massive heat. The topic returns to AEW.
CVV:
“What do you think the outcome of that Omega/Moxley match would’ve been had you not interfered?”
Callis:
“The finish of that match… The ending was never in doubt. This plan, in some or fashion, has been not years, but decades...
So now people have what they wanted. They wanted the old Best Bout Machine. They wanted Kenny Omega at the forefront of AEW. And now they’ve got it but people don’t like it because they can’t control it. ‘Oh, where’s the old Kenny Omega?’ Well, you were just complaining about the old Kenny Omega. Now it’s like… Don Callis is manipulating Kenny Omega. Kenny Omega is my family. People outside that family dynamic don’t understand…
I look after Kenny’s interest and it fits the overall plan. What we had with New Japan was the correct platform, what we needed was a plan to execute. So I called my best friend in the wrestling business, of 30 years, Chris Jericho. I asked him if he’d break every rule he ever had about never working anywhere other than for Vince McMahon. I asked if he would break that rule to wrestle someone who was my family. So yes, I pitted my best friend against a family member…
But thinking way outside the box, being able to convince Chris of that… We got to show people things can change and NJPW made millions off that match. You will never hear a thank you or acknowledgement of what I did. I’m not upset at all, because I didn’t do it for them. I did it for Kenny and I helped Chris as well. For everyone in the wrestling business who got raises because of AEW? Without the Tokyo Dome, Chris Jericho doesn’t leave WWE, he probably retires to be a rockstar. A thank you is owed to Kenny and I by the whole universe that follows pro wrestling, not anyone in particular... that’s small thinking.
Because Tony doesn’t like what happened at Winter is Coming, he shouldn’t bite off his nose to spite his face. Tony Khan doesn’t properly acknowledge what Kenny and I have done.
CVV:
How does Tony Khan factor into what you have going on?
Callis:
Tony is someone who was surprised by what happened [Impact talent arriving on Dynamite to help Kenny Omega, and Kenny saying “see you on Impact” as he leaves with the world title]
CVV:
Well.. you screwed him.
Callis:
Did I screw him or did I open his eyes? There’s a lot of people who are sycophantic yes-men who like to tell you what you want to hear. “Oh yeah, that’s great! Oh yeah, you can do no wrong!” And the wrestling media has done that for Tony… I haven’t acted like a yes-man… You can’t tell someone like Tony Khan ‘You’re doing this wrong, you better be careful’ because he’s only known success.
Tony had to have a failure in order to actually learn and evolve… Tony Khan understood that night and understands now: This is a whole different business and you can only trust yourself. I suspect there were a lot of people around Tony Khan that told him he was bulletproof and nothing like this could ever happen to him. Well, it happened. And he’s welcome for that lesson. At the end of the day, let’s be clear. Kenny Omega and I pull the strings. We control everything.
This is pretty unprecedented stuff.
Perhaps more succinct but no less emphatic was how Cody Rhodes put it when speaking to the AP a few days before his Wrestlemania main event:
My thing is: taking something that wrestling purists, analysts, observers, and journalists say cannot be done or will ever be done again, and subverting those expectations.
To subvert those expectations, you must first know them... And as has so often been proven, the most genius of wrestlers know the fanbase better than the fanbase knows itself.