Long before he was The Devil in Wyatt’s Funhouse, Vince McMahon was taking on God on WWE television.
Cast your minds back to 2006. It was a time of some genuinely brilliant wrestling, ECW’s return, and Vince McMahon creating his own religion in order to stick it to Shawn Michaels’ friend and tag team partner, God.
If that last one sounds a little bit madcap even for the WWE, that’s because it was, but it was glorious nonetheless.
At the very end of 2005, Vince and Shawn Michaels began a programme that would set up a Wrestlemania clash between the two. This angle would see Vince and his son, Shane, conspire to eliminate HBK from the 2006 Royal Rumble, forcibly induct him into the Kiss My Ass Club, and make him take a drug test live on Raw. They also re-enacted the Montreal Screwjob because that’s not been done to death at all.
For his part, Shawn countered the drug test by throwing his urine into the McMahon’s faces, and clung to his faith to show that he truly was a reformed character and not the HBK of old that Vince was trying to coax out.
Most thought that the rivalry would end with their No Holds Barred Match at Wrestlemania 22. It was a suitably violent affair that saw Michaels place a trash can over McMahon’s head and elbow drop him from a ladder. That’s a hell of a way to get even. It wasn’t enough to stop Vince from targeting him though.
Over the coming weeks the religious aspect of Michaels’ life became more of a focal point as Vince looked to push his rival’s buttons. It began with Vince and Shane taking a lovely father and son outing to a local church. There the elder McMahon took as many cheap shots as he could against the Christian God and compared himself to the deity.
Vince claimed that whilst God had created Adam and Eve, he had created Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and so on. He also cited the fact that God took Sunday to rest but Vince didn’t believe in days off, clearly pointing to him having a better work ethic.
This segment continued with Shane reciting half of a prayer prepared by his father before stopping after a line about Vince’s mighty semen. Vince then bragged about how he’d defeat Shawn at Backlash, asking God to strike him down if he was lying, which didn’t happen but seeing Shane nervously slide away after the comment was pretty funny.
The following week Vince took things further by taking to the ring to announce his religion, McMahonism.
Arguably Vince already had a few followers in the form of the glad handed yes men that Punk would put on blast years later.
In this promo, the boss would unveil a series of historic religious images with himself inserted into them. The insane billionaire could be found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as a part of Michelangelo’s painting. He, of course, took the opportunity to mention how his endowment compared to Adam’s. He also had himself inserted into the Last Supper and joined Moses on Mount Sinai with his own commandments.
It all ended when Michaels finally showed up to land a Sweet Chin Music on the grandstanding boss.
The insanity was only to be upped though as Backlash arrived and Shawn Michaels teamed with God in a tag team match against the McMahon’s. How could they book a deity whose existence is a matter of intense debate, you may ask? Well the answer is obvious, they had him portrayed as a spotlight. The Devil is in the details, but God is in the lighting rig.
The ominous beam of light stayed ever present throughout but was of precious little help (there is a comment on religion in there somewhere). Ultimately Vince was victorious and his battle with God with over.
Oddly enough there was precious little in the way of controversy surrounding Vince’s blasphemy. One might expect over-sensitive religious groups to have been up in arms, but it seems that nothing much came of all this. Other than a couple of humorous promos and the infamous spotlight from the heavens.
If anyone in the wrestling business was ever going to go to war with God, it would be the megalomaniacal Vince McMahon. The man considers himself the god of his own domain and so it’d a natural fit for him to take aim at any power perceived as higher than himself.
Was all of this in good taste? Probably not but it was also harmless fun. If it played out today it might draw the ire of the MAGA muppets, but that’s unlikely to happen with the highly sanitised product of 2020.
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You can find the author of this article on Twitter @Impers0nalJesus. Thanks for reading!