How About That Thing?

I’ve talked about characters in pro-wrestling that I liked, or could at least see the good in a couple times on here. I’ve generally tried to stay away from writing about storylines for multiple reasons. If the storyline was a good one, it comes off as me gushing like a fanboy. IF it’s a bad one, then I most likely get accused of ripping off dudes like Wrestlecrap, or Wrestling with Wregret, or… Uh… Okay, those are the only two I’m familiar with, but you get the idea. Believe me, I’m in no hurry to steal anybody’s thunder, no matter what it is I’m writing about. But sometimes, so much has been said and/or written about a topic that it’s kind of hard NOT to sound like a rip off.

Case in point, the story of Pepper. A lot has been said about this tragic tale that ultimately led to one of the worst matches in WWF history… And I’m about to talk about it even more. Because god damn it, I was shocked to my system when I saw this story unfold. No, seriously.

But before we get to far ahead of ourselves, let’s introduce the players in this story of ours.

This is Al Snow. In the late 90s, he was a crazy person who talked to inanimate objects. Most notably, a maniquin head simply known as Head. However, others found their way into his possession. Including the cute little guy seen in the picture I went to the effort of digging up.

The dog he’s holding is Pepper. Wrestlers having animal companions is, admittedly, something that fell out of favor as the 90s progressed, but there were plenty of guys with faithful animal companions at one point. IE, The British Bulldogs and Matilda, Jake the Snake Roberts and his python Chavo Guerrero Jr. and his stick horse… The list goes on.

Frankly, of all the weird things Al Snow brought to the ring, a chihuahua named Pepper was actually pretty normal. For starters, I knew people who brought their dogs with them to work. Johnny Dare, a local morning show host here in KC, brought his dog, Elvis, and eventually his other dog, Barger, with him to the show all the time. Hell, I even met a woman who went shopping with her little chihuahua puppy when I used to work at that Good Will. So yeah, this was probably Crazy Uncle Al at his absolute tamest.

Now it IS true that he talked to the chihuahua, and I’m pretty sure the chihuahua, at least in his head, talked back. But hey, baby steps.

His opponent is this man right here: The Big Bossman. In the beginning, he was a pro-wrestling police officer who threw his weight around, abused his power, and whomped people with a nightstick. No doubt there’s an LAPD reference in here somewhere given when this character showed up and all.

By the time this angle had come around, though, he’d just come off of being part of The Corporate Ministry, which is a topic that literally requires its own article right there, and was basically just some asshole with a nightstick and aviator sunglasses.

These two were feuding over this.

This is the WWF hardcore title. Hardcore wrestling, AKA: extreme rules, AKA: garbage wrestling, was all the rage in the mid-to-late 90s underground, an this was WWF’s attempt at snagging a piece of the pie. All matches were fought under hardcore rules, which basically meant there were no disqualifications, no count outs, and falls counted anywhere. And because that apparently wasn’t ridiculous enough, they eventually introduced the 24/7 rule several months after this angle took place. But that’s a story for a different time.

The rivalry started as wrestling rivalries often do. Al Snow had shiny belt, and Bossman wanted shiny belt. Well, okay, “shiny” is probably better reserved for belts that DIDN’T look like they got pulled out of the dumpster, but you get the idea. Good guy had belt, bad guy wanted belt, bad guy kidnapped pet chihuahua in order to get title shot… Wait, what?

Yeah, The Bossman not only kicked the shit out of Al Snow one night, but he kidnapped Pepper: his faithful companion. A few days later, Bossman demanded a hardcore title match, or else Pepper was going to get it. So naturally Snow gave him the shot, thinking he was going to get Pepper back no matter what. Yeah, no such luck.

The Bossman won the hardcore title, then proceeded to re-kidnap Pepper all over again! What a dick!

The next episode, The Bossman confesses that he had a change of heart, and felt really bad about what he did to Pepper. He asks Snow to meet him on Smackdown for dinner, and there, he’d let him have his dog back.

Not going to lie, as I saw this unfolding in real time, I had this really bad feeling something awful was going to happen to that dog. On one hand, I wasn’t wrong. On the other hand, every guess I made regarding what was going to happen ended up being extremely wrong.

The Bossman invites Snow to dinner, and in the course of the meal, Bossman tells him something like “Try not to get one of them paws caught in your teeth.” Snow stops eating, horror appearing on his face.

“That’s right, Al,” says The Bossman. “That steak you’re eating is some world class, grade-A PEPPER!”

A beatdown ensues, but at that point, I can’t even focus. I’m still shocked to my core at this point.

Yes, I know wrestling is scripted. In real life, that dog was probably chilling at Al’s house, or The Bossman’s house, or maybe it belonged to a third party altogether and was chilling at their house. I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid, guys.

But unlike the assholes who constantly bullied me in middle school, and harassed me for having the audacity to love a sport that didn’t feature The Kansas City Royals in any way shape or form, I was able to immerse myself in the lore and the universe of the WWF. I was willing to suspend my disbelief, and lose myself in the many plotlines going on at the time, including this one.

The idea of someone being cruel enough to kidnap someone’s dog, then killing it somehow, then cooking it, and finally forcing that person to eat their own dog… As a middle schooler, that genuinely shocked me. That was probably the most horrific thing I had ever seen in my life. And this was the same show that had a Satanic cult crucifying randos and speaking in tongues a couple of months prior. But I digress.

Reflecting on it now, I’d still say it’s pretty dark. Perhaps even needlessly so.

Look, I get that professional wrestling requires a massive degree of suspension of disbelief. There are a lot of things that get settled in the ring that probably ought to be settled in a court of law. IE, stolen property, assault, unlawful corporate takeovers… But making a dude eat his own dog? I mean hell, how do you even come back from that? That’s a level of fucked up that’s been impossible to top. Though Adam Page burning down Swerve Strickland’s house has definitely come the closest.

So, in typical fashion, Al Snow demands revenge for his poor dog. And not only does he challenge The Big Bossman to a match at the pay-per-view for the hardcore title instead of… Oh, I don’t know, calling the police? But he challenges him to the first ever Kennel From Hell match.

The way The Kennel From Hell works is simple. You have a solid steel structure that is basically WWF’s traditional steel cage and hell in a cell stacked on top of each other. The object is to beat the crap out of your opponent, then try to exit the massive structure. The catch, however, is that not only do you basically have to escape from TWO cages, but the space between the steel cage and the hell in a cell is inhabited by, in theory at least, rabid rottweilers.

I say “in theory”, because as the match took place, it became abundantly clear that said rottweilers were neither rabid, nor really all that interested in anything going on in the ring. As Al Snow and The Big Bossman fought for their very lives for championship gold and the honor of a fallen friend, the rottweilers basically just sat there for the most part. Two of them apparently decided to make puppies right there in front of the camera, while another one went off to take a dump, just to name a couple of the shenanigans that took place. Dare I say, it actually kind of distracted from the match at large.

For what it’s worth, Al Snow won, regained the hardcore title, and… If memory serves, he went back to using Head from that point onward until he started tag teaming with Steve Blackman. Meanwhile, The Bossman moved on to harass The Big Show about his recently deceased dad in an angle that pretty much redefined the concept of needlessly shocking to the point of being flat out stupid in hindsight.

As for The Kennel From Hell… Yeah, I’d say we don’t talk about The Kennel From hell, but we just got through talking about it. I’m also pretty sure Wrestlecrap beat me to it by a good twenty years or so, but whatever.

Regardless, The Kennel From Hell, and everything leading up to it has gone down in history as one of the WWF/WWE’s worst matches ever, if not one of the worst matches in professional wrestling altogether. For sure, the WWE has never had another one since. And to put things into perspective, this is a company that’s dug up the old Punjabi Prison once or twice after it proved to be a disaster the first time, so… Yeah.

It just goes to show that perhaps not EVERYTHING about The Attitude Era was great after all. And this is coming from one of its biggest fans, so there you go.