25 years ago today the famous "Curtain Call" incident took place at MSG

        It was 1996, WWF as it was called at the time was holding a house show at the world's most famous arena. The main event of the night was a steel cage match starring Shawn Michaels v's Big Daddy Cool Diesel. The match ended and that's when the "chaos" ensued so to speak. Immediately after the match Scott Hall aka Razor Ramon to hug Michaels. Not to crazy yet due to the fact Michaels and Ramon were both faces, but top dogs at the time in the company. But then Triple H entered the ring, a heel at the time to hug Ramon. Now this is  where at the times fans were completely confused at what was going on, two heels and two faces hugging and celebrating in the middle of the ring? This never happened before, at this point in wrestling kayfabe was so alive for the most part heels and faces weren't even seen together outside of the ring.  Now a little back story here, Hall and Nash were leaving the WWF to join competitors WCW, feeling at the the time the WWF has hit its limit on what they could do and taking a HUGE stack of money to go wrestle in WCW. This was basically seen as a goodbye party for what was known as "The Kliq" as this was supposed to be the last time all four best friends will be in the WWF together. Now this set off many of the old time wrestlers backstage, considering a slap in the face to the business, killing "kayfabe" so to speak. The Kliq for the most part was already hated by most of the talent in the locker room, they were known to have a lot of pull on bookings and to almost be untouchable by any of the other wrestlers in the WWF and almost seemed to have the final call on everything. It's rumored that WWF CEO Vince McMahon gave an "ok" for a farewell type ceremony but became very angered at how elaborate this became.
          There was a ton of blow back from this incident but unfortunately for one man, it came down on him and him alone......and that was Triple H. Now Kevin Nash and Scott Hall were leaving to go to WCW....so they couldn't be punished. Shawn Michaels was the WWF champ, top guy in the company and #1 superstar.....so he couldn't be punished. So for almost seven months Triple H was buried, he faced and lost to lesser talent and even got his King of The Ring win cancelled....but that was fine because it gave us the birth of Austin 3:16. Triple H would obviously rebound, winning the IC title almost a year after the incident. Also the way Triple H handled the "punishment" earned him a ton of respect backstage with a lot of the veteran talent in the locker room. The Undertaker once stated that by accepting the punishment Triple H earned massive respect with everyone backstage. But the punishment was short lived and Triple H became a 14 time world champion and did end up winning the 1997 king of the ring.
          By breaking "Kayfabe" this was the first time a major wrestling promotion had to admit that wrestling was scripted. In the long run this didn't hurt the WWF for long, McMahon being the genius he is used the fact that it was now know that it was scripted to use this fact in so many story lines in many years down the line. If you wanna look at this in a positive light? The cancelling of Triple H winning the 1996 King of The Ring led to the birth of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Austin became one of if not the biggest WWF superstars in history, this basically sent Stone Cold on a super rocket which in turned helped the WWF crush WCW in the Monday Night wars, thus putting WCW out of business. But I mean c'mon, overall looking back on this.....this shit was kinda fucking sick. It legit changed wrestling and in my opinion change wrestling for the better. I mean shit if Austin 3:16 was the only thing we got out of it? That's a win all in itself.