Monday, 28 May 2007

The Beginning and End of Imposter Kane




As part of the promotion for the WWE produced movie See No Evil, the WWE ran a storyline in which May 19 was a significant date for Kane. The date was actually the U.S. release date for the movie in cinemas. Kane plays the lead role in the movie. The original plan was to have Kane defeat Rey Mysterio for the World Heavyweight Championship on that date. This would be only 2 days before a major pay-per-view title defense between the champion Mysterio and challenger J.B.L.. However, Jacobs was aiming to take time off after the movie's release, but winning the title would not allow him to do this. So at Jacobs' request, an alternate storyline was produced.

On May 29, Kane was close to beating Shelton Benjamin for the Intercontinental Title. Kane won by disqualification when a second Kane (Hankinson) interrupted the match and attacked the original Kane. The second Kane, henceforth known as Impostor Kane, looked and acted exactly like the original Kane did when he debuted on WWF programming. As a result, Hankinson would repeatedly attack the real Kane during or after his matches. Ring announcers claimed that the identity of the Impostor Kane would likely be revealed to be someone from the real Kane's past. The pair finally faced off at the WWE Vengeance Pay-per-view. Surprisingly, Hankinson (the impostor) won the match using one of Kane's trademark moves. However, the crowd in attendance did not understand where the storyline was going and barely reacted to these events. One night later, the original Kane attacked the Impostor Kane, removed his mask, and threw him out of the building. This ended the storyline, and Hankinson returned to Deep South Wrestling.