During a recent interview on the ‘Ten Count’ podcast, WWE Ruthless Aggression Era Veteran Eugene spoke about the controversy of a mentally healthy person portraying an intellectually disabled individual on WWE TV, in and out of the ring.
Here’s what he had to say:
“Nobody at any time, now or then, told me the character was offensive. Some people nowadays might say ‘Well you can’t get away with that anymore’.
But I disagree because WWE is the master of putting something out there, and making it right, and making the people go ‘Oh, I realize now that I guess it’s okay’.
Triple H was almost the best, so friendly, and pulling Eugene in, and he’d come in and get beat up ‘Oh, it’s your fault Eugene’. ‘Okay, I’ll do better’. But in the end, Eugene pinned Triple H.
Eugene pinned Vince McMahon, although Vince McMahon did put my hand in a toilet and put green in my hair, so Eugene was an underdog story about a boy achieving his dreams, in the ring with Rock, in the ring with Hogan at WrestleMania.
He got the action figure, he got the teddy bear, the t-shirt.”
Professional Wrestlers are playing a character or a gimmick, so if we consider that fact, it can not be seen as anything more offensive than an actor portraying a role of someone in a movie. It’s fiction, it’s not real life!
Nick Dinsmore wrestled for Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling under his real name from 1998 till 1999, but had his major breakthrough a few years later, when he debuted for World Wrestling Entertainment in April of 2004 under the name Eugene, the (kayfabe) mentally disabled nephew of then RAW General Manager Eric Bischoff, a character he portrayed until September 2007 and again briefly in 2009.
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