Taboo Tuesday

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the video Here.

Ah the 2000's, back when we watched television on television and nobody knew or cared what wrestling personalities thought about anything behind the scenes. Knowing what WWE's social media presence is like these days it feels strange to think about a time where the same company was fairly apprehensive about entering the world of tomorrow. In '97 they launched Byte This, an online only show that was so under the radar with WWE management that it would usually go unnoticed unless a wrestler went too far when shooting, assuming nobody was watching. Then in 2005 their B-shows Heat and Velocity were moved to WWE.com after failing to renew their tv deals, becoming the first weekly in ring shows that WWE would host on their site. They even got in social media wrong by trying to get fans to use the platform they had put money into, but Tout wasn't a match for Twitter. Before that though, they also tested out a new online hit, their take on the classic internet poll, sort of.

On October 19th 2004 WWE Presented Taboo Tuesday from Milwaukee Wisconsin. Nowadays you can find some kind of wrestling on most nights of the week but back then it felt strange for a pay per view to take place on a Tuesday. Every match on the card had some sort of variable which could be voted on by fans at wwe.com. In some cases this would change the stipulations of a match, and in others the challenger for a title. To a fan, that concept might sound pretty cool, but to the wrestlers planning their matches it in some cases it was chaos.

In the opening match of the night, Chris Jericho was set to defend his Intercontinental title against any one of fifth-teen potential challengers. On screen is a list of all of the wrestlers fans could vote for. Looking at this list would you be shocked if I told you that Shelton Benjamin won the vote? It's also worth noting that at the time Batista was still a bad guy under Triple H in Evolution, and just a few months later he would win the Royal Rumble heading towards Wrestlemania main event success. Normally, a Chris Jericho versus Shelton Benjamin match would have high expectations attached to it, and maybe thats why it won the vote, but while the match delivered many at the time suggested it might have been better if the two could have had the time to plan more.

When asked about the match recently by Chris Van Vleit, Shelton Benjamin actually said "I had every belief that Batista would be facing Chris Jericho." When Van Vleit challenges this Shelton elaborates "Me and Chris have spoken of this, Our match was the only match where it was one hundred percent we don't know what we're gonna do. Every other match has some sort of gimmick involved... they had some idea of what they were going to do, and who with." The end part of that statement is sort of true, but we'll get back to that later.

Shelton also claimed that WWE officials wouldn't give Chris any inside info leading on to the match, such as who the votes were leaning towards. He also noted that Jericho seemed to be very perturbed by the situation, going as far as to quiz his prospective opponents on his trademark spots, to see who he could rely on if they were chosen. Here's my issue with this though, remember that list I showed you of all the 15 wrestlers, here are the voting results as published by WWE at the time. While yes if the votes were legit, and we'll get to that too, Jericho could have potentially faced one of 15 guys, Shelton clearly won by a landslide. He got almost forty percent of the vote, double the votes as the runner up Batista. Also besides Shelton and Batista, nobody else got more than seven percent. I'm not sure Jericho should have been planning all that much in case Val Venis won. Whats really surprising though, is that Shelton actually won the title from Jericho that night, so WWE must have had some idea of what they wanted going forward as again, a lot of those guys weren't beating Jericho should they have gotten the chance.

As Shelton noted in that interview, many of the other matches were more reliant on voting for what the gimmick of a match would be. The second match would be a fulfil your fantasy women's battle royal, where the vote would be for what costumes the wrestlers would wear, either school girl, french maid or nurse. Whatever won the vote, and if you care it was school girl, the match itself would be the same, rubbish. There would be a similar vote later in the night to decide if Christy Hemme and Carmella (not that one), would compete in an evening gown match, an aerobics challenge whatever that means, or a lingerie pillow fight. Other matches were along a similar vein to this only a bit more serious. Would Kane and Gene Snitsky fight with a lead pipe, a chain or a chair? Would the loser of Eric Bischoff versus Eugene wear a dress, have their head shaved or be the winners servant? In the main event, would Ric Flair battle Randy Orton in a steel cage, falls count anywhere or submission match. In that last one the cage won by a whopping sixty eight percent. This was barely surprising as WWE did all they could to tell you to vote for the cage without actually telling you to vote for the cage.

Remember how I said Jericho wasn't the only person entirely clear on who he would be facing? Well later in the night Triple H would defend the World title against one of three opponents, either Chris Benoit, the man who dethroned him at that years Wrestlemania. Edge, who was still a while away from being the main eventer he would become, or Shawn Michaels, a man with years of friendship and bitter rivalry with the Game. I wonder who won that one? Well Shawn did with in a close vote, narrowly beating Edge. To me, an admittedly biased Shawn Michaels fan at the time it felt obvious that HBK should win and battle his at the time heated rival Triple H, but Edge was also clear a contender. Earlier that year he had returned from extensive neck surgery that took him away from the ring for over a year, and so he felt like a new and fresh face in the main event scene. Speaking to Inside the Ropes in 2018, Edge claimed that had he won the vote he was told that he would have beaten Triple H for the World title, but he doesn't explain this much further. It's also worth noting according to Edge, Shawn won with 51% and he was 2% behind, leaving 0% of votes for Benoit. Thats some pure Steiner math right there and not even close to the real numbers. He does however, as does every other wrestler I've seen comment on the concept, claim that the votes were legitimate. One such example being Mick Foley, who wrestled at the second Taboo Tuesday in 2005 against Carlito. The fan vote in that one would be which of Mick's famous characters would Carlito face, Mankind, Cactus Jack or Dude Love. All this meant depending on the result was essentially a costume change for Foley, as I'd imagine the match he and Carlito planned would likely be very similar whichever won. Much like how Jericho was concerned earlier, Mick has in the past admitted that he dreaded Dude Love winning, as he had no outfit prepared for that. Nowadays Mick will play the character in cameos, but have you ever noticed he doesn't dress like he used to? Thats because he for many years he hated what WWE did to the character in 1998 by turning him into a sleazy heel, and he hadn't yet decided to revive the gimmick. Luckily for him three time WWE champion Mankind won the vote, lucky for all of us really, as had the match played to each character's style, Cactus Jack would likely have gotten DQ'ed in minutes when he pulled his barbed wire bat out or set something on fire.

So all of this begs the question, how real were the votes? The wrestlers have claimed it was real, and for what it's worth Dave Meltzer and Bruce Prichard have also claimed they were real too. Speaking last year, Freddy Prinze Jr, who was at the time working behind the scenes for WWE, also claimed that the votes were real. He said "They literally worked out three different matches with whoever the main guy in the ring was going to be. Granted, you know that these were all super pros so they didn’t have to choreograph the entire match. They can feel it while they’re out there. But they would have to be prepared, regardless of who they thought would win just in case someone didn’t win the vote and they would have to go with the person who did. So they were always very careful with the three options they gave you." That last part is very important, as while it's generally accepted that the votes are real, it's also clear that WWE would often guide fans towards the result they wanted, but if the result didn't go their way they would make it work regardless. That begs the question, if I gave you a couple of options to choose from, but one is clearly better than the other, is that really a fair vote? It's one of those grey areas where it's wrestling, so it's kind of hard to believe in it completely.

One thing in my research for this video that I saw is a lot of fans asking why this isn't done today? Honestly, I wouldn't revive it at all. Taboo Tuesday slash Cyber Sunday existed in a time largely before fans revolting in the arenas. The most rebellion you got was adult male fans booing John Cena while women and children cheered for him. Nowadays if you put out a poll for a match, if the fans aren't into your product they will vote actively against what a company might want. We kind of saw that in TNA years ago when the implemented a fan voting system to determine who the World title challenger would be, and fans would overwhelmingly pick Nigel McGuinness regardless of who TNA wanted.

I've seen many comments claiming that the fan voting idea was ahead of it's time, but actually it might have actually been the exact right time. It existed in a time before fans who had grown unhappy wanted to throw a spanner in the works. Could it work if done again today, yeah maybe? But I feel like it could only be done with a company that has the good will of the fans behind it, and maybe that is now? We won't know for sure unless they someday revive the idea. I mean they once ran a PPV called Fatal Four Way, so I wouldn't put any idea past them...

Sources:

Shelton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INEXpuzgtKI

Edge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EleUkYL4hPI

Freddy Prinze Jr. https://wrestlingheadlines.com/freddie-prinze-jr-details-wwe-using-real-fan-voting-for-cyber-sunday-events/