Remember when Ed Ferrara was "Oklahoma" in WCW? I hadn't really thought about that angle in a long time but last night I was watching this month's Legends of Wrestling roundtable discussion on WWE 24/7 with Jim Ross, Michael Hayes, Mick Foley, Jerry Lawler, and Eric Bischoff and the topic was "Wrestling Biggest Heatseekers" among those discussed were Lex Luger, Buff Bagwell (JR told the story of Buff's mom calling in to say he was sick and couldn't make some house shows), Paul Heyman, Scott Hall, and of course Vince Russo. During the discussion of Russo, Hayes asked Jim Ross how he really felt about the whole Oklahoma bit from WCW. Ross said he himself wasn't hurt by it but that it upset his children alot and that bothered him. Hayes then asked how did he compare that to the things Vince has done to him, like the 'Kiss My Ass Club' and the 'Pulling J.R.'s head out of his ass' skit right after J.R.'s colon surgery. J.R. said he didn't appreciate any of it, but said he felt McMahon did it cause he thought the fans would be entertained by it, where he feels 'Oklahoma' was just a personal attack that really wasn't done for entertainment value.
Now in MY PERSONAL OPINION, I think right the opposite. While I don't know what McMahons intentions were , I (nor anyone else I know) found that skit McMahon did it about J.R. at all entertaining and it served no real purpose other than make McMahon look stupid and to make fun of J.R. On the other hand, I thought 'Okahoma' (at first at least) was a very funny impression of J.R. In the vein of the skits WWE had done in the past in those times with the 'Scheme Gene', 'Huckster', and 'Nacho Man' skits. Everyone's biggest problem seemed to be the fact they were making fun of J.R.'s Bells Palsy. I didn't think that was the case, it's not like the whole character was based around J.R.'s Bells Palsy, the punchline of the joke (in my opinion at least) was the fact he was coming out putting over "Dr. Death" Steve Williams like God, which J.R. always did, and he his overselling on commentary. The fact he would sit there and tell you Silver King was a "star linebacker at Tiajuana State University" was freakin' hilarious and the fact they would be having something stupid going on in the ring and he'd start screaming about it like Ross would "JUVI'S GOT THE PINATA....PINATA......PINATA......PINATA..." The Bells Palsy was just part of his physical appearence at the time, just like his cowboy hat. I'm not defending them for doing it, it probably was in bad taste but hell it was the 'Monday Night Wars' that wasn't the lowest blow that had been thrown. Where I do have a problem with the Oklahoma character was it was carried on for TOOOO LONG!! Once or twice would have been funny in a Saturday Night Live skit sort of way, but it was like telling a joke with the same punchline every week and by the time he was in the ring with Madusa it had long since wore out it's welcome and was just beating a dead horse. In speaking of this, Michael Hayes then questioned Eric Bischoff about this piece of business.
NWO 4 horsemen parody
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Yes, the infamous nWo Arn Anderson retirement parody. Michael Hayes told Bischoff that this skit made him and a LOT of other wrestlers very angry and said he thought this and the Oklahoma character were two of the most disrespectful things he ever saw. Bischoff agreed and says he regrets allowing them to do it, but at the time he didn't really think it was a personal attack on Arn Anderson from Nash and company that came up with it. Again in MY PERSONAL OPINION as a fan I thought it was one of the funniest things ever on Nitro, can I see where Arn and his peers would be upset? Absolutely. Arn was being forced into retirement at an early age (well for some) and I'm sure it was hard to deal with and being mocked by people he didn't particularly like had to be tough BUT, had they not did that promo (I, at least) wouldn't have made it a point to watch that Fall Brawl ppv that was building up to, but after seeing that and knowing how personal it was you had to watch it to see if things were gonna turn ugly for real AND RIGHT THERE is the difference between this and the other skits in this article. The Oklahoma character never sold one ticket, or caused ANYONE to buy a pay per view. Vince's skit on J.R. never sold a ticket or drew one extra buy for a pay per view. I can state for a fact that the nWo horsement skit did at least sell at least one more pay per view cause I wouldn't have bought it had I not wanted to see the aftermath of that skit. Take that for what it's worth.
