Scab Referees

[prosenfi]

Due to the current replacement referee situation in the NFL, I decided to talk about one of my favorite storyline arcs of the attitude era. That, my friends, was the "scab" referee angle of late 1999.

It started with a 5-man free-for-all (Rock vs Kane vs Big Show vs Undertaker vs Mankind), where the winner was supposed to meet HHH at Unforgiven for the WWF title.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoqDQ62yQIs

Two minutes into the match, it broke down to where all the competitors were striking refs, officials, wrestlers from the back, etc. The repricussions from this attack was that the refs went on strike due to unsafe working conditions, so WWF used "scab" refs (Tom Pritchard, Harvey Whippleman, etc.), who were absolutely terrible in making calls.

In the end, the night after Unforgiven, Vince gave the refs more "authority" in matches, and fined HHH for striking a ref in his match at Unforgiven.

For those of you who were watching WWF back then, what was your opinion of this storyline?

 

[BringBackJWangYang]

looking back at it, i think it was a great idea for the time. The time featured controversial things, and the angle made the role of refs in wrestling seem much more important. Kinda like in baseball when controversy is made because a safe runner was called out, etc.

 

[HBsam31]

It was a pretty good angle at the time, and it seems like they are currently playing into the whole referee thing again. I think the refs should be a little more important than they have been, and this new angle with AJ and the refs could be a throwback to what you just mentioned.