10 WWE Angles That Have Aged Horribly

Time is a funny old thing. We’ve all looked back on clothes were wore, music we liked, and opinions we’ve had and gone “Oh God, what on Earth was I thinking?”.

So too have we gone back to wrestling angles we remembered fondly and with a modern lens and observed in horror as what plays out on screen has aged worse than bananas in a hot glove box.

These are 10 WWE Angles That Have Aged Horribly

10. HLA

Nothing screams ‘aged badly’ than most of what went down during the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras, where profanity, violence, and sexualised content were de rigueur every Monday night.

So of course we can’t talk about Ruthless Aggression Era without mentioning Eric Bischoff and HLA; Hot. Lesbian. Action.

On-screen it was simply played off as Bischoff scraping the barrel in order to boost ratings, and was nothing that we weren’t used to seeing when tuning into WWE TV. At the time the majority of the female performers in WWE were little more than eye candy, and in a post-Women’s Revolution era this blatant objectification feels more than a little grubby.

Titillating when fans were 12, perhaps, but a little sad when you realise this was all written by grown men, and definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

Also, the fact that the segment ended with some brutal intergender violence (when Three Minute Warning were set upon ‘The Lesbians’) makes the whole thing come across as even more crass. 

9. Roddy Piper vs. Adrian Adonis

Ambiguously flamboyant heels are a tried-and-true trope in wrestling. From Gorgeous George through Adrian Street, to Goldust and Rico and beyond, plenty of wrestlers have used their sexuality to get into the heads of their opponents.

In the 1980s, WWE had Adrian Adonis, and after Roddy Piper returned to the company to find his Piper’s Pit set replaced by his former friend Adrian’s Flower Shop the notoriously Rowdy Scot had a tizzy and decided to berate and insult Adonis week after week.

Piper’s attacks on Adonis came across as nothing more than homophobia, with Piper supposedly the babyface in this scenario as he trashed the Flower Shop with a baseball bat and attacked the ‘Adorable One’ with a crutch. 

Whilst Adonis himself stooped to low levels to berate and attack Piper, the whole thing just doesn’t sit right when reviewed today.

Luckily, Piper would learn from this feud when he entered a rivalry with Goldust in 1996. No wait, he punched him so hard he broke his own hand and trashed his car with a baseball bat. 

8. JBL at the border

The JBL character was one that often crossed the line of good taste. Whilst Bradshaw himself is (or at least was) an unapologetic old-school hard-ass, we’re not sure if the man behind the gimmick would ever go hunting for illegal immigrants along the US/Mexico border.

JBL did such a thing in 2004 shortly after his transition from Acolyte to Wall Street whizz, with JBL filming a promo extolling his virtues as a real American and somehow earning a WWE Title shot for playing his part in border control.

Whilst such an angle was to get JBL over as a detestable heel and build more sympathy for the beloved Eddie Guerrero, it likely wouldn’t fly today, with racial tensions in the USA and across the world being major talking points over the past several years, especially after Donald ‘Let’s Build a Wall’ Trump’s presidential election win in 2016.

JBL would, of course, cause further controversy not long after this angle when he decided to goose step at a German house show, an act which is illegal in the country and cost Layfield his gig as a financial analyst for CNBC. 

7. The wedding of Billy and Chuck

Billy & Chuck, another ambiguously gay act, but rather than the OTT fright makeup and antics of the likes of Adrian Adonis and Goldust, B&C erred more on the side of the stereotype, with matching fake tans, and their own personal image consultant.

Eventually, Billy proposed to Chuck and the team were engaged to be wed, but at the wedding it was revealed that Billy & Chuck weren’t gay at all and it was all just a publicity stunt that went too far! 

The fallout at the time was significant, with LGBTQ charity GLAAD deriding WWE for the bait and switch after earlier championing the company for what was - by standards of the time - a progressive angle. 

Amazingly, this all went down on the episode of SmackDown that took place just a few days after the whole HLA debacle on Raw.

Whilst modern WWE are more open in celebrating LGBTQ+ voices and performers, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. 

6. Triple H marrying Stephanie McMahon

Marriages in wrestling are hardly ever cause for celebration, with a trouble-free ceremony as rare as a tasteful Seth Rollins outfit.

One rarity of an on-screen marriage that actually stood the test of time was that of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon in 1999, several years before their IRL nuptials.

However, we can’t gloss over just how the two became wed in kayfabe, with Trips drugging Steph and impersonating her voice saying “I do” at a drive thru chapel in a move designed to annoy Vince McMahon and Test. 

Steph eventually turned heel and went ‘Hunter is clearly the man for me’ and the rest is history.

Whilst Stephanie ultimately revealed the whole thing was planned by the sneaky pair, it makes for very uncomfortable viewing in the modern era, where debates around consent and assaults against women are major issues that led to sustained protests and campaigns across the world, including the industry-specific #SpeakingOut movement. 

Yes, you can say that pro-wrestling isn’t real, but when it mirrors reality in many ways there must be discussions about what’s right and wrong to run as an angle.

5. Mankind says "I Quit"

When The Rock turned heel on Cody Rhodes in 2024 and unleashed a vicious side, many were surprised at how ruthless Rocky could be. Those people clearly had never seen Corporate Rock at his heel worst.

During his feud with Mankind over the WWE Championship in 1999, Rocky wanted to crush Mankind physically as well as spiritually, with Mick Foley’s alter-ego having transformed into a loveable underdog in the few months prior.

Whilst the angle itself remains alright overall, we have to look at the 1999 Royal Rumble and what played out during their infamous I Quit Match. We all know the score now; Mankind in handcuffs, Rock with a chair, and 11 hard unprotected shots to the head.

With everything we now know about the effect of concussions and things like CTE, this is an even harder watch than it was when it aired, and is borderline horrifying upon reflection, especially as Rock was only meant to swing the chair five times.

We will never see anything like this again in a WWE ring. 

4. DX's Nation Abomination

When they weren’t pretending sausages were penises or showing their bums to people, D-Generation X were adopting blackface and using racially insensitive imagery to poke fun at their rivals.

Like Kliq mates the NWO before them, DX thought they’d cosplay as their rivals for some hilarious banter, with Triple H, X-Pac, Road Dogg, Billy Gunn, and Chyna poking fun at The Rock, D’Lo Brown, Kama Mustafa, and The Godfather. And Owen Hart too. 

Chyna fortunately decided against ‘blacking up’, but the rest of DX had no qualms in painting themselves to cover their white skin. Astonishingly, DX were the babyfaces here, too, but if they tried it today you bet they’d be cancelled, fired, and ostracised. 

D’Lo Brown has since said that he and the rest of The Nation were ok with the angle at the time, but looking back they have some regrets for allowing the skit to go ahead the way it did.

3. Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown

As part of his rivalry with Bad News Brown, babyface Roddy Piper thought it’d be a laugh to paint half of his body black, pop on a Michael Jackson bejewelled glove, and mock Brown’s heritage. The joke was on Piper, though, as he said it took him weeks to completely scrub the paint off.

Some at the time took offence to the angle - rightly so - but you have to wonder what WWE management were thinking in letting Piper go through with it in the first place.

Modern WWE clearly don’t want to be associated with the bit, and have scrubbed all evidence of the match and pre-match interview from the WWE Network and Peacock. 

2. Eugene vs. Eric Bischoff

Now, no one is claiming that the Eugene character was well received or indeed even that popular when he arrived in WWE in 2004, but it goes without saying that WWE wouldn’t dare try anything as on the nose with one of their characters in the modern era.

Whilst we could have just thrown Eugene the character in this list wholesale, we instead thought we’d focus on his feud with kayfabe uncle Eric Bischoff, a story that’s just plain cruel.

Eric eventually got his comeuppance at the end by getting his very lovely hair shaved off, but before then we had to see the routine bullying and humiliation of Eugene week-in week-out, and this was a character who was portrayed as having severe learning difficulties.

Such was the Ruthless Aggression era that a character like Eugene not only made it past an initial pitch meeting, but out of the writer’s room, onto TV, and became a focal point of Raw for several months.

WWE will definitely want to make sure that everyone in time forgets about Eugene. 

1. Pretty much anything with Vince McMahon

The Mr. McMahon character was pivotal to the Attitude Era, with the corporate suit doing everything in his power to make sure the renegade Steve Austin wasn’t the face of his company.

Outside of the wildly successful Austin feud, though, McMahon’s storylines were rooted in humiliation, sex, and the corruption of absolute power.

We think of McMahon making Trish Stratus strip and then bark like a dog in the ring, the countless divas he made out with, his drugging of wife Linda McMahon, the feud with God, and of course the Kiss My Ass club. Uncomfortable viewing, one and all.

The angles became basically unwatchable after McMahon was ousted from the company in the wake of allegations levelled at him in former WWE employee Janel Grant’s lawsuit, with McMahon now treated as persona non grata by the WWE and parent company TKO.