Hulk Hogan
One of the most infamous main events in WCW history took place at Halloween Havoc in 1995 in which The Giant wrestled Hulk Hogan for the world title. To put The Yeti aside, the set-up to the match was one of the silliest.
Prior to The Giant’s in-ring debut, WCW had Hulk and Andre’s kayfabe son battled in monster trucks on the roof of the arena.
Hogan won and the duo brawled afterward, with Hogan accidentally knocking The Giant off the building presumably into the street or car park below. To be fair, I should say it seemed more like manslaughter than murder as it was an accident with Hogan regretful over the incident.
After that horseplay murder, so it seemed, The Giant nonetheless walked straight out to the ring, without an evident mark on his body even though he had allegedly just fallen off of a building.
Completely non-sensical, The Giant was implied to be immortal but WCW made so little allusion to this that they may as well not tried although Bobby Heenan did his best. The match itself was pretty good for a wrestler who had just supposedly died but, of course, not good by any other standard.
As Dave Meltzer put it “Angles like this are the reason pro wrestling in this country is in the condition it is in”, a pretty damming inditement on the industry at the time.
This would not be the end of murderous Hogan.
At WrestleMania X8. The Rock and Hulk Hogan embraced after the truly titanic bout. It was nice of Rock to completely forget that the nWo member had tried to kill him when “Hollywood” Hulk drove a huge truck straight into an ambulance The Rock was in.
When the WWE saw the nostalgic reaction to Hogan, WWE did a 180 on Hogan thus the time he literally intended to murder one of the most beloved wrestlers of all time was discretely swept under the rug.
Droz
If there is certainly one thing you could say the Attitude Era was not, it was tasteful, and what more proof is needed than the case of alcoholic Hawk.
Real-life substance abuse issues, specifically the addiction to alcohol had been surprisingly popular in the few years preceding the Hawk storyline. 1996 saw drunk Jake Roberts manipulated by Jerry Lawler who poured Jim Bean whisky down his throat and 1998 saw inebriated Scott Hall stumbling down to the ring in WCW.
Purveyors of good taste, the WWF incorporated Hawk’s real-life issues into the storyline although both Road Warriors (Legion Of Doom, as they were in the WWF) were vehemently against the idea. With this drunken state hindering the team, Animal gained a new member in “Puke”, better now known as Darren Droztov, or simply Droz.
Not only was Droz notable (at this point, prior to infamy due to his paralyzing injury in 1999) for being able to throw up on command but also the fact that in storyline Droz had deliberately sabotaged Hawk and tried to end his life.
Reaching its conclusion the helplessly drunk and suicidal Hawk climbed atop the WWF titantron in order to attempt to throw himself off. Droz climbed up, seemingly to try to reason and sympathize with the Road Warrior but instead decided to push him off to his doom off-camera.
It was revealed Droz had purposefully got Hawk addicted in order to take his place in the group, even attempting to kill him by pushing him off the TitanTron. Hawk was going to jump anyway but that would not stand up if Droz was taken to court.
Now without an aura and ruined, the storyline had tarnished the duo’s name in many fans eyes and how could it not, really? Murder was about the only thing that could make the storyline worse, it was just lucky the storyline was scrapped quite soon after. Other than breaking up with LOD (for totally different reasons), there was no punishment for Droz.
Kayfabe Attemped Murder in Wrestling, But Why?
As displayed above, larger-than-life storylines such as attempted murder have been common tools to develop characters, further storylines, and write off stars from television.
All kinds of workers have been guilty of this charge on national television with it an aspect of the larger-than-life sports entertainment side of professional wrestling.
It raises the question as to if attempted murder should ever be used in professional wrestling – a debate I would not do justice here.
As Oscar Wilde put it:
“I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”
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