Okay then. Back in 1995-96,
World Championship Wrestling, for the
first time pretty much ever, was presenting a serious threat
to the
World Wrestling Federation in the
Neilsen Ratings. To
counter this, you would think that the
WWF would try to raise the level
of their programming.
Not even close.
Instead, they started airing skits lambasting their opposition.
The company portrayed in the skits is run by "Billionaire Ted," an old
Southern gent who shops at Sears and knows nothing about the professional
wrestling company that he owns. His two main stars are "The Huckster,"
a balding old raving lunatic who books all his own angles, and the "Nacho
Man," a balding old raving lunatic who is also afraid of women's shoes
and coffee.
This was obviously a parody of WCW's owner, Ted Turner, and their
two main stars, Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage--both of whom were former
WWF stars. (The shoes and coffee bit was making fun of Savage having
lost a few matches due to being bopped with a WOMEN'S SHOE OF DOOM in one
case and having HOT COFFEE OF AGONY spilled on him in another.)
Other personalities soon surfaced as well, including "Scheme" Gene (based
on Mean Gene Okerland), a balding (notice a pattern?) employee who constantly
shills his own telephone hotline despite not having anything to report.
Notable skits included Billionaire Ted being a contestant
on Jeopardy wherein he got the simplest of wrestling questions wrong, and
Ted having a nervous breakdown at a press conference (admitting that
his goals in life were "Money, power, power, money, I want it all!")
World Championship Wrestling didn't find this satire to be quite so
brilliant, and they sued the WWF for defamation of character and numerous
other charges. The skits were dropped as a result, but not before...
...Wrestlemania XII, where the Huckster faced the Nacho Man with Billionaire Ted as the special referee.
Both men collapsed of oxygen deprivation after about a minute and did
a stretcher job to put the skits out of their misery once and for all.
This is another
one of those things the WWF doesn't like to talk about; the skits haven't
been mentioned on WWF TV since Wrestlemania XII.