Veer Mahaan
On this 24th anniversary of WrestleCrap, I’d like to once again celebrate the great re-design of the site with all the old inductions available for everyone. Well, almost all.
It turns out, there are a few inductions that slipped through the cracks, such as the one I did a few years back on WWE’s Trick or Street Fights.
If you search for “Trick or Street Fight” on the site today, all you’ll find is a later induction by RD about one particular match. Whereas if you’d bothered to search for “Trick or Street Fight” a few years ago, you’d have found my induction and wouldn’t have written another one. Ahem.
Then again, I once made the same mistake with Billy & Chuck’s wedding, so who am I to complain?
Anyway, here is my lost Trick or Street Fight induction:
Trick-Or-Street Fight:
Wrestling meets Smashing Pumpkins (but in WWE, with no Billy Corgan)
October 31st, 2002 — that was the night I ceased being a kid and became a mature adult. Or, at least, it was the night I decided I valued wrestling over candy.
That Thursday, I gave my trusty Bob Dole costume a rest (and not just because the ’96 election had long since ceased to be relevant) and skipped my annual trick-or-treating to watch Smackdown.
And what a Smackdown it was.
Besides John Cena dressing up as Vanilla Ice and rapping for the first time (the effects of which still reverberate to this day)…
…and Eric Bischoff kissing Stephanie McMahon (the effects of which didn’t even reverberate into the following Monday)…
…the broadcast featured Edge-Benoit…
…Angle-Guerrero…
…Lesnar-Mysterio…
…and some quality Matt Facts.
It’s fair to say, though, that if I were a kid today, there is no way I’d be skipping out on free candy just to watch the kind of nonsense WWE puts on every Halloween.
And the centerpiece of that nonsense is the annual Trick-or-Street Fight.
WCW’s Halloween Havoc may have been a consistently embarrassing event for wrestling fans, but at least it brought some originality to the holiday festivities, featuring mummies…
…phantoms…
…electric chairs…
…uh, gloves…
…and several dozen Stings.
But the Trick-or-Street Fight? It’s the same damn thing every year.
The first such bout was Dean Ambrose’s first match since Hell in a Cell, when Bray Wyatt attacked the Lunatic Fringe for no apparent reason.
So how would Dean ever bounce back? With a very, very silly match against Cesaro.
On Monday, Dean had vented his frustrations by bashing Cesaro in the head with a microphone, so on Thursday, the two settled their differences with pumpkins and plastic skeletons.
On one side of the ring stood a bucket of apples and a table complete with plastic tombstones, candy, and candy-corn colored kendo sticks.
On the other three sides of the ring stood the exact same stuff. It was a very symmetrical street fight.
Cesaro, clearly out for brutal revenge, plunged Dean’s head under water and tried to drown him…
…before switching his attention to the most vicious form of vengeance out there: building a big pile of Jack-o-lanterns and trying to suplex Dean onto them.
Neither man wanting to land on the dreaded hollow pumpkin rinds, the two jockeyed for position until at last Cesaro took a back body drop into the makeshift pumpkin patch.
If Dean had instead driven Cesaro into the pumpkins with a gourdbuster, this match wouldn’t have belonged on WrestleCrap.
Other notable Ambrose offense included this baseball slide into Cesaro, which sent dozens of candy bars flying out of his bucket.
Wise of WWE to use a bucket instead of a candy dish; you can put a lot of nice things in there, and it doesn’t cost ninety dollars.
Dean tried to get some extra hangtime on his elbow drop by hopping on a broom, but it still ended up more CM Punk than Kaire Sane.
To end the bout, Dean stuck another gourd on Cesaro’s head and DDT’ed him for the 1-2-3. Talk about a squash match!
Dean then acted out a scene from Hamlet…
…popped another pumpkin on Cesaro’s head…
…and, after the King of Swing stumbled around, baffled that he was suddenly blind…
…hit him with another DDT to close the show.
By the way, this was the main event.
I suppose this match was supposed to be a “treat” for the fans in attendance.
The “trick” was to get fans to chant “Yes” for an injured Daniel Bryan, then re-purpose the footage to hype a free month of WWE Network.
The following year, Smackdown featured yet another Halloween garbage match, this time called a “Trick or Treat Street Fight” in case fans didn’t quite grasp the play on words of the first match.
Just like the first one, this match was the main event of the blue show, and just like the first one, this match featured two upper mid-carders, but that’s where the similarities ended.
This year, one of the participants, Dolph Ziggler, came to the ring in costume, allegedly. If it was a costume, it was one he never took off…
…but Jerry Lawler recognized the get-up as a Nikki Sixx outfit and chided Booker T for not being on the ball and noticing it.
Also, I lied about the similarities ending, because this Halloween hardcore match would be exactly the same as the previous year’s.
Exact same cheap decorations…
…exact same spots…
…and the exact same pumpkin-headed foolishness.
This time around, Miz had to pretend that the pumpkin on his head was fastened so tight he couldn’t get it off if he tried, while at the same time holding on to it for dear life lest it easily fall off.
Jerry Lawler, who minutes earlier was so astute by pointing out Dolph’s costume, finally realized that those orange, yellow, orange, and white kendo sticks were supposed to look like candy corn.
Miz briefly broke with the holiday spirit by smashing Ziggler’s knee with a chair, but because it wasn’t Halloween-themed, it had no lasting effect —
— seconds later, Dolph countered Miz’s figure-four attempt with a roll-up for the victory.
2016 saw the Trick-or-Street Fight revert to its original name but get downgraded from the main event slot.
Enzo Amore, dressed as Buzz Lightyear…
…took on Luke Gallows in what was again the same damn match…
…right down to the head-dunking spot.
Well, there was one new addition to the Halloween-themed throwaway brawl: pumpkin pie.
Let it be known that pumpkin pie is not and has never been a traditional food for Halloween; it’s a traditional food for Thanksgiving, which is in November and not October, last time I checked.
Perhaps Booker T put this match together.
Enzo won with an assist from Cass, who tried to jam yet another pumpkin on Luke Gallows’s head. Or attempted to, anyway.
And on and on it goes. There was another Trick-or-Street Fight this year, which played out exactly the same as the ones from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018 – I’m making an educated guess on that last one, which hasn’t technically happened yet.
[Art’s note: the 2018 Trick-or-Street Fight did, in fact, happen, and it was exactly the same as all the past and future ones]
As long as there is filler in WWE programming (three-hour Raws, Smackdowns without the brand split, etc.) there will be the Trick-Or-Street every year around All Hallow’s Eve.
Pumpkins will be smashed, heads will be dunked, and not a drop of blood will be spilled nor a forehead gigged, as WWE screens all the candy for razor blades.
Thanks for joining us, and here’s to another 24 years of WrestleCrap!
Oh, I almost forgot. I’m supposed to talk about Veer. Uh, here goes:
Veer Mahaan
A meme that spiraled out of control, Veer Mahaan may have been the first “gag” push in WWE history.
The story of Veer Mahaan began in earnest in late October 2021, when WWE announced his imminent arrival to Raw.
COMING SOON to #WWERaw
@veer_rajput pic.twitter.com/X5pgUofq2G
— WWE (@WWE) October 27, 2021
The next week, they did the same thing.
And the week after that.
And so on.
Despite all the hype for his arrival, Veer was wrestling on WWE Main Event almost every week. In fact, the night of his first vignette, he wrestled Jaxson Ryker.
Not only that, but he’d already wrestled on Raw itself for two months. Did no one notice the giant Raw logo in the background of his highlight reel?
Raw and NXT viewers (and hypothetical Main Event viewers) had already seen plenty of Veer Mahaan, and none expected anything big from the Jinder Mahal henchman.
But the futility of the hype, combined with the endless innuendo…
…made Veer into a meme, meaning WWE had to keep it going…
At last, the night after WrestleMania 32, WWE finally let Veer explode on the scene.
Veer’s first order of business was to destroy the Mysterios, which the announcers claimed had been his plan all along. After all, you don’t wait five months to debut if you’re not going to do anything important, right?
Just like a lion in the animal kingdom, Veer Mahaan is biding his time and waiting for the perfect moment to strike on #WWERaw. pic.twitter.com/aqDHtXJ9tV
— WWE (@WWE) January 25, 2022
Right?
Over the next few weeks, Veer destroyed the Mysterios, Mustafa Ali, and local competitors in virtually identical fashion:
A standing splash…
…a clothesline (dubbed “The Million Dollar Arm”, like the Disney movie he inspired) (No, really)…
…and his new submission, the Cervical Clutch. Hey-o!
Dominik Mysterio proved trickier the second time around, trying to tire Veer Mahaan out…
…but did he really think he could test the stamina of a man who’d waited five months to come?
Aside from Jimmy Smith’s amazement at four officials pulling Veer off…
…WWE had to steer clear of the double entendres that originally drove fans’ amusement with Veer Mahaan.
Instead, Jerry Lawler made jokes about Veer being hairy…
…and the rest of the announce team rhymed “Veer” with “fear” as much as possible. (e.g. “There is ample reason to fear Veer”)
Nothing caught on.
Veer’s various mini-feuds culminated in a battle royal elimination…
…and a month and a half later, Veer Mahaan showed up one last time for another squash.
Less than five months after his debut, Veer Mahaan had clutched his last cervix, moving back to NXT for another tag team run.
That meant he’d spent more time “coming soon” to Raw than on the show itself, ending up worse off than when he started.
Had Veer Mahaan come along five years earlier, he would have been WWE champion. Seriously.
But in 2022, WWE pushed him almost out of embarrassment…
…and pulled the plug as soon as they could claim they’d made an honest effort.