History Headscratchers / WWE

* It's odd that the unbranded Big Gold Belt was the "WCW Championship" and the current WWE-branded Big Gold Belt is unbranded as the "World Heavyweight Championship".

* In the 1994 Royal Rumble, Wrestling/BretHart and Wrestling/LexLuger, the last two in the ring, were adjudged to have hit the ground at the same time, and as a result both qualified for the prize of challenging for the WWF championship belt. But the way they worked it out was that one would fight Wrestling/{{Yokozuna}} and then the other would take on the winner. Surely this was highly unfair (on Yokozuna who would have to defend his belt twice in one night), and the correct way to do it would be the two of them to fight each other, and the winner would get to take on Yokozuna for the belt.

* Why was he called the 1-2-3 Kid? Possibly the worst name a wrestler's had. I know he defeated Razor Ramon with a 1-2-3 count, but it's hardly a method unique to him... "The Kid", was a lot better, reminiscent of "Billy the Kid" or other such historical "kids".

* Wrestling/MattHardy does a number of terrible things to his brother [[Wrestling/JeffHardy Jeff]], including: knocking him unconscious in a hotel, targeting him in a hit-and-run, sabotaging his pyrotechnics to explode in his face, betraying him at the Royal Rumble to help Matt's previous arch-nemesis Wrestling/{{Edge}} and costing Jeff the world title, and ''burning down Jeff's freaking house'', resulting in the death of Jeff's dog. And yet, only a couple of months removed from a blood feud, Matt is sorry and they're tagging together. There are some things the ThreeMonthRule just doesn't cover.

*** No, Cole is an example of a bad heel, a guy who buries faces cheers for his favourite without logic, thus being irritating and getting nobody over. For examples of GOOD heel commentators, see Wrestling/PaulHeyman and Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield, they put over how good the babyfaces were (with Bradshaw he mostly did this, save one or two people he genuinely disliked) yet still supporting the heel, cheering when the heel won via dastardly means and professing his superiority to the face they spent 10 minutes putting over. Thus the face gets genuine credibility via the words of both commentators, the heel gets heat via cheating, and the commentator gets heat for supporting the heel and glossing over or ignoring his dastardly actions.

** I never liked the idea that much either, but I'll try to explain the appeal. For one thing, it presents the audience another perspective as it makes things less black and white. Also, and I think it's the biggest reason: They're the only ones, if anyone, to call out a face's MoralDissonance as opposed to [[{{Handwave}} handwaving]], ignoring, or even [[JerkassDissonance justifying it]]. Especially in the JerkSue-populated Wrestling/AttitudeEra.

*** Wait a damn minute... why would Bischoff sign a guy ''that he has no intention of pushing?'' That's pretty much the definition of flushing money down the toilet... but then again, this is WCW we're talking about here.

** My understanding was that it was the wrestlers themselves who refused to accept the buyouts because they would get less money than if they just stayed until said contracts expired. Some, like Sting, were also under contract with AOL Time Warner, not WCW itself, which made buying them out more expensive. A lot of fans do seem to think Vince should've just spent the money, since the InVasion was likely to make it back and then some, but when you're dealing with that many celebrities, it isn't quite so simple.

*** Well, this troper heard that the original plan was for Christian to make his re-debut by being the guy behind the attacks on Jeff, and the bookers dropped a few hints here and there. However, IWC fans and the like figured the clues out and immediately voiced their observations that Christian was the guy. Stephanie [=McMahon=], however, got wind of this and pulled the entire storyline because she was assuming that the fans would be too stupid to figure the whole thing out. She also pulled this with the "Save.us.222" campaign in late '07 that hyped up the return of Wrestling/ChrisJericho, which dropped many hints that pointed to Jericho. So instead of re-debuting around the time of Cyber Sunday, as was originally planned, Jericho's return was pushed back into December, at which point the entire hype behind the Save Us campaign was lost and people didn't give a shit.

** They've been doing that since at least 1999. This troper distinctly remembers the still image montage they used the ''Raw'' after the ''Royal Rumble'' in '99. The logic is rather simple: they want you to buy the rerun of the PPV to see what actually happened. In the days of Youtube, it's less effective, but nonetheless...
*** They did it even earlier than that. This troper remembers still image montages happening way back in 94

* Why do they keep putting Jim Ross onscreen as a play by play man he often messes up the names of moves gets wrestlers names wrong and just repeats the same stupid catch phrases over and over again. While he can be entertaining and would make a great color man he is not cut out for play by play. It seems Kevin Dunn (or whoever is in charge of tv now) douse not relies this and made the much better play by play man Michael Cole into a clone of J.R. and then turned him Heel because people did not like that. While I respect JR and think he did a good job behind the scenes, he has never been as good in front of the mike as a lot of people claim especially compared to people like Vince [=McMahon=] and Michael Cole, when working with one of them he was at his best as he could give insight and color while the other one called the match. Now the best play by play guy is Todd Grisham hopefully they will not mess him up like they did Cole.

** The gimmicks sell merchandise, too. Toy Elimination Chambers and Hell in a Cell cages are money makers. But the real change has been having them at the same PPV every year, which really does make things too predictable. That, however, can be chocked up to logistics. Those structures are rather large and time-consuming to transport and set up. If HIAC is always in October, then they know they only have to pull it out for that month.