In 2013, WWE began airing vignettes for an Irish wrestler named Sheamus.
Why? No one’s quite sure, as the Celtic Warrior had been a staple of WWE television for four years already.
In these vignettes, some random citizen in a bind would call Sheamus to bail them out with a strategic Brogue Kick.
First, a couple was having a romantic dinner when the man started choking.
While the waiter attempted to save the victim with the life-saving maneuver known as Doggy-Style…
…his lady friend dialed 1-800-FELLA on her touch-tone smart phone…
…and Sheamus instantly appeared.
The Celtic Warrior then Brogue-Kicked the food right out of the man’s throat…
…but stole his woman as payment.
On screen, a Powerpoint animation flashed the number 1-800-FELLA…
…an announcer stating that “Help is just a Brogue Kick away”.
So what was 1-800-FELLA? One thing it definitely wasn’t was a working phone number. Perhaps WWE didn’t want to buy a real 800 number.
Or perhaps they’d tried 1-800-SHEAMUS but lost out to 1-800-RID-ANTS.
The next week, an old lady needed Sheamus’s help getting her cat out of a tree.
Like a superhero, Sheamus jumped into frame, Brogue-Kicked the tree…
…and rescued the feline.
Naturally, the grey-haired woman showed her gratitude the only way she knew how:
By taking off her clothes and offering Sheamus her other cat.
Sexy sax soon gave way to Yakety Sax (or something like it) as Sheamus fled the scene.
It seems the Celtic Warrior didn’t want to put the “sex” in “sexagenarian” (Those quotation marks are a courtesy to you, the reader).
Two weeks into the 1-800-FELLA era, fans still didn’t know what it was supposed to be.
But eagle-eared viewers might have noticed that not only did Sheamus call people, “Fella”…
…but he’d also been yelling “Fella!” like a gay Marlon Brando during his entrances and before his finisher. He even yelled it in the cat vignette.
Sure, it made no more sense than an American wrestler going to Ireland and just yelling “Guy!” all the time…
…but WWE ran with it.
After a few weeks with no new 1-800-FELLA commercials, a third skit emerged, making the first two sketches look like pure cinema in comparison.
With noticeably worse pacing, production, and acting, this commercial spoof featured forty straight seconds of some hiccuping office doofus.
After a long back-and-forth, said doofus’s co-worker finally beep-boop-beeped 1-800-FELLA…
…bringing in our hero to spook him good.
When that failed, he Brogue-Kicked the hiccups (and life) out of the guy.
1-800-FELLA came to an abrupt halt when Sheamus tore a labrum — and not that old lady’s, either.
To this day, no one knows exactly what the point of 1-800-FELLA was. It certainly wasn’t to get Sheamus over as a good guy —
— he’d been a babyface for the past two years.
It wasn’t to re-introduce him to WWE fans after a long absence —
— he’d been wrestling the whole time the vignettes aired.
And it wasn’t to hype up a new finishing move —
— he’d been using the Brogue Kick since day one.
Could 1-800-FELLA have been a full-fledged gimmick for the Celtic Warrior, akin to the Acolytes Protection Agency? If so, it never produced a single piece of merch
In some ways, Sheamus’s injury may have saved him from being Flanderized and reduced to a non-sensical catchphrase.
A catchphrase that, it turns out, he wasn’t even saying half the time.
Apparently he’s been yelling, “Faugh a ballagh” for years.