Pro Wrestling Debacles That Weren't Supposed To Happen
There's a fine distinction between "fake" and "scripted." Professional wrestling isn't fake, per say—those wrestlers really do pummel, punch, and poke each other, and they really do get hurt, often quite badly. But it is, in fact, scripted—matches have predetermined outcomes, and wrestlers must follow a loose series of plot points. But sometimes, things just go haywire, forcing wrestlers to react on the fly, or in some cases, just plain suffer on the fly.
The loser of the Batista vs. John Cena match: Vince McMahon's quads
There are conflicting reports about just how the 2005 Royal Rumble was supposed to end. As it happened, Batista and John Cena battled to what appeared to be a draw, with both wrestlers going over the top rope, out of the ring, and onto the floor at exactly the same time. That's an incredibly difficult move to execute, so nobody but the wrestlers and writers involved know for sure if they were supposed to go out this way, or if they bumbled their way to a draw.
The refs couldn't decide on a winner — the one representing the Raw brand declared Raw's Batista the winner, while the Smackdown! ref went with his guy, Cena. At that point, 60-year-old WWE chief Vince McMahon stormed down to the ring in either real or scripted anger , hops into the ring ... but then his legs give out and he crumbles to the ground. McMahon apparently tore his quad muscles. Both of them.
That definitely wasn't supposed to happen, an accident McMahon attributes to not stretching properly beforehand. Or just being really, really old and pushing himself too far.
Mickie James gets lewd
One notable addition to the WWE's late-90s "Attitude Era" were matches fought by scantily-clad ladies. At 2006's WrestleMania 22, Mickie James grappled with Trish Stratus, and at one point, Stratus had James in a hold from which James tried to escape via what was more or less sexual assault, grabbing Stratus's crotch.
James did indeed escape, but then turned to the crowd and licked her fingers. That wasn't very family friendly, and neither was when she made a V-formation with her fingers and stuck her tongue through. James thought bossman Vince McMahon would be pleased with her bit of salacious improvisation, but he wasn't, and he screamed at her backstage after the match. Apparently, James forgot the Attitude Era had wound down some years before, and now they were in the business of attracting kids.
Andre the Giant, drunk in Japan
In 1986, WWF superstar Andre the Giant headed to Japan, and New Japan Pro Wrestling, to square off against Japanese star Akira Maeda. But Andre showed up to the match drunk, which for him meant somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple dozen beers or so — no exaggeration. Fully inebriated, Andre refused (or was unable) to sell any of Maeda's moves, and instead just kind of staggered around the ring, drunk, with the occasional moments of kicking Maeda in the face, or falling on top of Maeda, or allowing Maeda to desperately kick at his giant legs.
After twenty-five minutes of that, Antonio Inoki, the founder of New Japan Wrestling came into the ring and tried to reason with both Andre and Maeda. Andre agreed to play ball, and even offered Maeda a free pin—even though nobody had ever done that to him before. Maeda refused, and before long, Inoki threw the match out. An almost-certainly bored-to-tears crowd must've been super relieved.
Hulk Hogan chokes out a talk show host
In the 1980s, comedian and actor Richard Belzer hosted a hybrid sitcom/talk show on Lifetime called Hot Properties. There were scripted bits where Belzer would argue with staffers backstage, then come out and do loosely improvised interviews with celebrities. One 1985 episode featured Belzer talking with Mr. T and Hulk Hogan, on the show to promote the first WrestleMania. The plan was for Belzer to goad Mr. T and Hogan for promoting violence and then suggest that pro wrestling wasn't quite legitimate.
After Hogan delivers some trademark Hulkisms ("say your prayers," "take your vitamins," etc.), Belzer asks for Hogan to show him some moves. Hogan obliges, and places Belzer in a front headlock called a guillotine choke, or a sleeper hold. That's when Belzer learned wrestling can be quite legitimate when the wrestlers want it to be. He lost consciousness and his arms went limp—Hogan quickly released him, and the host flopped to the ground and split his head open. On the next episode of Hot Properties, Belzer showed off his stitches to prove the skirmish had not been a hoax.
Kurt Angle almost for-real loses to a rookie in the "Angle Invitational"
In a recurring Smackdown! feature called the "Angle Invitational," wrestler Kurt Angle would invite guests into the ring to take him on. Angle was always supposed to win, of course, because he's the star. But in 2004, things got dicey when Angle took on Tough Enough winner and MMA fighter Daniel Puder. During the bout, Puder got Angle in a Kimura lock, which Angle found he couldn't get himself out of. The ref, realizing what was happening, fast-counted Puder's shoulders down even though they really weren't down — otherwise, Angle would've had to tap out, which would've broken script, or he would've had to break his own arm, which would've broken script and hurt really, really bad.
The "curtain call" incident
Longtime WWE stars Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were set to leave the organization for the greener pastures of WCW in 1996. Their final matches were an untelevised WWE show held at Madison Square Garden. When their matches were over, Hall and Nash, along with their real-life buddies Triple H and Shawn Michaels, all came out to the ring together—something they as a group had been planning without management's knowledge. They broke both script and character as they all gave each other a big group hug — faces and heels, together as one — celebrating all the good times they'd had together as colleagues.
Understandably, McMahon was furious at this blatant show of wrestling as a, well, show. But since Michaels was world champion and Hall and Nash were leaving, only one wrestler bore the brunt of the punishment. Reportedly, Triple H was supposed to win King of the Ring later that year, but to punish him, Vince McMahon took him out of the tournament and didn't have him win anything for five months.
He then rebounded to win about a dozen world titles, marry McMahon's daughter, and position himself to take over the company one day, so clearly the punishment stuck.
A referee beats down, and chokes out, a fan
Wrestling may be scripted, but everyone in that ring is a professional who knows how to go with the flow when necessary ... even the officials. On a 1997 episode of WCW Nitro, Diamond Dallas Page was attempting to call out a rival wrestler, when two fans got so riled up, they decided that they wanted a piece of the action, too. And so, they decided to try to the enter the ring. Protip: never, ever, EVER do this.
One guy didn't make it past security, but the other did, only to suffer a beatdown on the part of not the mighty DDP, but the referee. The skinny little ref, for his part, turned out to be quite the warrior, kicking the fan's head in and rendering him unconscious. Then, just for added measure, he gouged the man's eyes out and stuck him in a chokehold, only releasing when Page told him to, because the other wrestler was coming out and scripts had to be followed. So unless you want the crap beaten out of you by not just big, beefy wrestlers, but tiny referees who are way tougher than they look, don't charge the ring. Ever.
Mankind's "Hell in a Cell" match that turned into literal Hell
At the beginning of 1998's "Hell in the Cell" cage match between Undertaker and Mankind, the masked maniac played by Mick Foley threw a chair atop the cage, and then climbed up after it, with The Undertaker following. As they grappled, one of the panels they stood on almost gave way. But they kept going, and Undertaker did what he was supposed to do: throw Mankind off the cage and onto an announcer table. Except that he wasn't supposed to fall through the table onto the quite hard concrete floor below. But that's what happened.
Foley lay still on the ground, as Vince McMahon and a staff doctor rushed to his side. He was ultimately wheeled out on a stretcher ... only to prove himself completely insane by jumping back off the stretcher, heading back to the ring, and rejoining Undertaker atop the cage.
As Mankind and Undertaker resumed their fight, Undertaker delivered a chokeslam, the panel finally gave way, and Mankind plummeted all the way through the cage panel to the hard surface below, again. Not a bit of this was planned.
Once more, doctors attended to the somehow-still-alive Foley, who flashed a smile to the cameras: one that included a tooth just barely hanging on by a nerve ... and rivers of gooey mouth-blood. These injuries were due not only to the fall, but from the chair that Foley had tossed up on top of the cage at the beginning of the match. When he fell through the panel, the chair came, too, and it landed on his face. And somehow, both wrestlers finished the match, with Undertaker winning after slamming Mankind down on a pile of thumbtacks Mankind himself had strewn about the ring.
Stan Hansen knocks Vader's eyeball out of his head
n 1990, the two main companies, All Japan Pro Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling, put their best stars against one another for New Japan's Super Fight, but the IWGP Heavyweight Championship match has one moment that feels like it inspired George R.R. Martin.
A gaijin (foreigner) hoss fight, the match pitted New Japan's champion Big Van Vader against the greatest American star of Japanese wrestling, All Japan's Stan "The Lariat" Hansen. Both men were notorious for hitting for real and doing it hard, with Bret Hart describing fighting Vader as wrestling "a cement truck filled with barf."
Adrenaline and company pride created a potent speedball for the fighters, and soon Vader and Hansen abandoned all pretense of theatrics and just beat on each other, with Hansen breaking Vader's nose. Suddenly, as Vader grabbed Hansen on the mat in retaliation for the nose injury, Hansen accidentally jammed his thumb into Vader's eye, popping Vader's eyeball out as if he'd just pitted an olive. If you decide to dig up video of the moment, be warned: it's disgusting.
There was no way to deal with this subtly, and horrified gasps rose from the crowd. For most people, that'd be the end of the night, but Vader somehow managed to immediately push his eye back in and keep on going. The match finally ended in a no-contest after Hansen and Vader started brawling out on the floor and spilled over the guardrail, at which point Japanese officials decided to end things before they had to bring out tranquilizer rifles.
The ECW Chairs Incident
In 1994 at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia, that year's Hardcore Heaven card featured one of the many bouts between Mick Foley (as Cactus Jack) and Terry Funk. While they had better matches before and in the future, this one stuck out partially because a tag team called Public Enemy decided they needed to not only end the match, but take out Funk and Cactus. However, the hardcore duo got the better of their aggressors, and Cactus decided he needed to beat on them some more with a chair. But with none at hand, he asked a nearby fan to give him one.
In retrospect, maybe Cactus should have been more specific about wanting just a single chair. What followed was the wrestling ring being covered in a rain of metal chairs (and a trash can), forcing Funk and Cactus to run for their lives as the Public Enemy was buried and some poor man desperately screamed over the PA: "STOP THE CHAIRS! DO NOT THROW CHAIRS INTO THE RING!"
Thankfully, after things got settled, the incident became a hilarious and iconic image of ECW that still lives in legend to this day.
Sabu rips himself open on barbed wire
One of the most popular and famous faces of the ECW rogues gallery was the "suicidal, homicidal, genocidal" Sabu, who dressed like an Arabian prince but fought like a psychopathic hobo, frequently using chairs and tables as weapons.
Naturally, ECW put Sabu up for the ECW Heavyweight title against champion Terry Funk. But for these two men in this promotion, a normal title match could never be satisfying enough. At some point in the booking room, they slapped together a match that sounded like hardcore Mad Libs: a no-rope barbed wire death match, where the ring ropes would be replaced by strings of barbed wire.
Things started out swimmingly in spite of the stipulations. But then the fight nearly went off the rails when Sabu took a leap at Funk and he dodged, sending Sabu into the barbed wire and turning his arm into pulled pork, shooting blood everywhere. Sabu — being Sabu — refused to call things off, and quickly improvised a solution, grabbing a roll of athletic tape from somewhere and repairing his bicep like an 8-year-old would fix a busted action figure. Eventually, the match ended with Sabu becoming champion, but with both men tangled together in the barbed wire like twin caterpillars in one cocoon.
Jeff Hardy shows up for a match completely wasted
Wrestler Jeff Hardy has a history of drug issues that have been well-documented over the years, but no one thought they'd pop up when Hardy was looking to regain the TNA World Heavyweight Championship from Sting in the 2011 Victory Road event. Just before the event, Hardy seemed to have disappeared, at least until staffers found him backstage, on the ground. They dragged him to the entrance ramp and sent him out. As soon as Hardy's music hit, it became clear he was on quite a trip, stumbling, teasing the crowd by pretending to throw his shirt then flipping them off, and violating a camera man's personal space.
Realizing that trying to contain Hardy would end badly for everyone, Eric Bischoff came out, secretly telling Sting and Hardy to end the match quickly. After Bischoff caught a punch and Hardy waffled for a few seconds, Sting grabbed Hardy, nailed him with his Scorpion Death Drop move, and held him down for a three-count, even as Hardy tried to escape. But it ended anyway, and both Sting and the TNA fans were disgusted, with the audience chanting "Bull****" and Sting yelling that he agreed. For Hardy, Victory Road was his rock bottom. Thankfully, he cleaned his act up for good not long after.