[BlogEntry] WWE : Who Killed Vince McMahon?

For those who haven't been following it, a few weeks ago Monday Night Raw was treated to one of the more shocking storylines they've done in a long long time – the death of Mr. McMahon. It was actually quite a good stunt, timed and choreographed carefully with spliced footage so that from the minute he stepped into his limo and closed the door, without changing the camera angle, the whole thing exploded. You're left with no choice but to think "Ok, there's was no time for him to slip out the other door." (Actually the explosion was filmed the previous night, so he was of course never in the car to begin with).

Naturally everybody is all over the story, half of them talking about how stupid it is (since we all know that Vince McMahon is a real person who was obviously not killed, duh) and half talking about how much trouble the WWE is going get in for using the FBI's name and other ridiculous trivialities.

Personally I think it was the most creative thing they've done in a long time. Surprised the heck out of me when it happened. It takes a certain amount of…well, balls, to kill off a major character on a show that has no conceivable end. This isn't the Sopranos, after all. WWE storylines are produced in the context that they will continue forever. This makes continuity annoying as you can imagine, because 3 years down the road when you have two people that are best friends there'll always be somebody saying "Remember when they tried to kill each other?" But when you kill somebody, they're supposed to stay dead.

Anyway, now the big question is, "Who did it?" This being a soap opera storyline they of course went with the "No body was recovered from the scene." Unlike a soap opera, though, the WWE has no real respect for its fans or their attention span. In a soap opera if a character is killed off, no matter how mysterious the circumstances, you can expect him to be written out of storylines for months. You eventually stop wondering about him, until one day he's back and you're all "Whoa, holy hell, I thought he was dead!" With prowrestling, however, you're treated every single week to "Let's go back and look at the footage of the explosion" and "Who do you think did it?" This naturally results in the storyline being incredibly boring after a few weeks you find yourself saying "Just get it over with already, tell us who did it, and then have Vince make his return."

My theory is that Vince faked his own death. After all he does love to play the evil genius character. It wouldn't be a stretch at all to say that he felt he was losing the respect of his employees (having just lost his beloved championship) and he decided to fake his own death to learn who was truly loyal to him. That would be pretty anticlimactic, though, and I hope they don't do it. We shall see!