“Oh, come on!” — A McMahon staple of 1980s WWF television
Those of us who grew up in the 1980s didn’t know Vince McMahon as the owner of the WWF, but rather as the announcer of Saturday afternoon Championship Wrestling on Channel 56 in Boston.
In some ways, Vince was a good television announcer, as he had the prerequisite drama down pat and understood how to sell the wrestlers so that you wanted to see them live in the Boston Garden.
On the other hand, Vince didn’t know anything but the basic holds, and he probably coined the phrase, “What a maneuver!” to cover for that lack of knowledge.
No doubt Michael Cole’s use of that phrase today on WWE Monday Nigh Raw derives directly from McMahon, who could very well be yelling those words into Cole’s headset from the Gorilla position.
All that said, back in the day there was nothing quite like an indignant McMahon getting aggravated at a heel’s rulemaking and yelling out to the TV audience, “Oh, come on!”