The 10 Most Absurd Things Attempted by Professional Wrestling: Part 2 of 2 by Nick Bryans
Wrestling clowns? Well now I've seen everything!
In part 1 of this mini-series, we looked at the stupidest and most bizarre things ever attempted by professional wrestling, numbers 10 to 6. We looked at birth to prosthetic limbs, terrorism and attempts to solve custody battles via ladders. In part 2, it gets far, far worse.
5) The Edge, Lita, Matt Hardy love triangle
In theory, it was the most perfect storyline imaginable; Matt Hardy had a 6 year relationship with female superstar Lita. They were two of the most popular characters in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) at the time. Matt gets injured and has to spend 6 months at home recuperating. During which time, Lita starts to cheat on him with Edge, the number one ‘heel’ (bad guy) in the organisation. Matt finds out about this, Lita dumps him, and she starts going out with Edge full time. Matt gets fit again and returns to the WWE, vowing to get revenge on Edge. Amazing storyline, right? Only it wasn’t a storyline. It legitimately happened. Lita and Edge hooked up while Matt was away, then she dumped him.
Now the WWE aren’t the kind of people to turn down a readymade story like this, and booked it as a match at Summerslam 2005; the returning Matt Hardy to face Edge and avenge him for stealing his girlfriend. Now, wrestling is a scripted production. Meaning that the result is pre-determined and they aren’t actually ‘hitting each other’, so to speak. So obvious problems arise when ask two people who justifiably hate each other to have a wrestling match.
“Hi, Matt, we want to put you in a program with Edge. You know, the guy who stole your girlfriend from you.”
“Oh fantastic, I hate that guy. I’m gonna annihilate him.”
“Well…erm…we don’t want you to actually fight. Just have a scripted match. You know, usual stuff; A few arm bars, couple of near falls, maybe give him a suplex or something.”
“…………………………what?”
Now despite the obvious problems with putting two guys together who generally wanted to cave each other’s skulls in, the WWE decided to go through with it, and the match happened at Summerslam 2005.
What proceeded to happen was that a 3 minute brawl took place, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a pub car park at 3am. The two guys tried to – quite literally – beat THE SHIT out of each other. After about 2 and half minutes of stiff, uncoordinated scrapping, Edge dropped Matt’s head on the ring post, busting him wide open and causing him to piss out blood like a split hose pipe. Once Matt was failing to respond to his name (not before a few more kicks from Edge), the referee stopped the match. Matt’s triumphant return lasted just over 3 minutes and finished with him comatose on a stretcher, while Edge walked off with Lita hand in hand, probably to have sex with the match replay on in the background.
Edge went on to be a an 11 time heavyweight champion, while Matt Hardy got fat, was released from the company and now spends his time uploading surreal videos of himself to Youtube, declaring his love for grapes. Don’t think he ever got over it, if I’m honest.
Watch the complete clusterfuck of a fight here
4) Cult Leader Crucifies Opponent
ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) was the pioneer of the ultra-violent, hardcore wrestling that became the hallmark of the sport in the late 90s. Everything from barb-wire ropes to 30 foot elbow drops through tables was considered par for the course. The willingness to go where other federations wouldn’t saw them gain an almost cult-like following in the Eastern United States.
Their ‘two fingers up’ attitude to other federations saw them as the anarcho-punks of wrestling, unwilling to be controlled by censorship or network executives. So for ECW to do a stunt that saw them issue a full and frank televised apology, means that you know what they did was beyond crazy.
There was a feud between their two ‘top guys’, Raven and Sandman. Raven portrayed a cult leader figure that started a relationship with Sandman’s ex-wife, and brainwashed his son to turn against his father and join Raven and his cult. The culmination of this feud saw Raven and his cult assault the Sandman, and crucify him on a wooden cross, complete with mock headpiece. They then lifted him up and carried him out of the building.
Rather than the effect they thought it would cause, the crowd went silent. People were gobsmacked, some walked out in disgust, including Kurt Angle, Olympic gold medal wrestler and on the verge of signing for the company. Following the stunt he left the building, and threatened to sue the company “should they ever show any footage of him at that show”. Raven, who had played the role of crucifier, came out to the dumbfounded crowd, out of his wresting character, and apologised to anyone offended by the stunt. Owner of the company Paul Heyman – who claimed that he did not know how far Raven was going to go with the stunt – opened the next show with a further apology, and insisting that the stunt was not meant to “equate a wrestler to Jesus Christ”, which clears up the debate once and for all whether any wrestler was a great as the late Jesus Christ.
3) Wrestling’s Approach to Representing the Gay Community
As previously discussed in their approach to representing Muslims, wrestling doesn’t know its arse from its elbow when it comes to political correctness, and unless the character is a 6”4 All American football player, you can be sure that they’ll fuck up representing itsomehow.
Orlando Jordan is perhaps the most famous (and one of the very few) openly bi-sexual wrestlers working in the USA. Jordan pitched to creative the idea of a gay wrestler gimmick. Now it’s not known what he pitched, but what he ended up with was something along the lines of Kenneth Williams meets Graham Norton in a branch of Fitness First. His debut on Impact Wrestling (Formerly know as Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling, formerly considered half-decent) saw him air lifted into the area, wearing nothing but police tape and tubfulls of make-up. He was released from his harness and ‘crawled seductively’ (yes, CRAWLED SEDUCTIVELY), towards a pink chat-room style set, populated by head stylist from any provincial Tony & Guy.
But that was just the start for the most archaic representation of a gay character seen since ‘Are You Being Served?’. He had a ‘talk show segment’ where he made disturbing and predatorial advances towards fellow male wrestlers, he would stick pictures of his opponents over his nipples, squirt a thick white liquid over himself in an orgasmic fury, and use moves called things like ‘gender bender’. The repulsive gay characterture was assumingly meant to make the knuckle-draggers in the crowd go ‘ugggh, look at the creepy gay man!’, but instead Jordan’s antics were received with almost deathly silence by the audience, other than the odd mutter between fans saying ‘Christ, it’s not 1950, you know.’. Orlando’s gimmick bombed, and he was released from his contract earlier in the year.
2) The Infamous Katie Vick ‘Necrophilia’ Storyline
What happens when you do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE on a show? Do you recycle old material? Re-do old stories for a new crowd? Or do you just decide to take two spoonfulls of crazy and pick the oddest and craziest thing that come to mind? The WWE chose to take this option.
Picture the scene; Super bad guy (HHH) says he knows a secret about super good guy (Kane). HHH claimed that Kane had killed a former girlfriend when younger via reckless driving. Now for most, the accusation of death by dangerous driving would be a big enough accusation to build a story on. But not in pro-wrestling. Oh no. HHH went onto add that after she died, Kane – I shit you not – proceeded to have sex with the dead body. The once great sport that had 90,000 people turn up to a live event, was now reduced to storylines that some horror B-Movies would say was in bad taste.
Rather than kill the angle stone dead, the next week HHH presented the evidence that Kane had sex with the corpse. In either the greatest or most deplorably distasteful 4 minutes in pro-wrestling history, HHH presented a video clip to the 10,000 people in attendance and the 4 million people watching at home, of a man (who is clearly HHH wearing Kane’s trademark mask), standing next to an open coffin with a human sized doll in a wig in it. The masked man then proceeds to strip, get into the coffin and imitate sex with the stunt dead body. Sometime you just have to applaud minds that turn debauchery into an art form.
In a sport where people have given birth to hands, had fights for the custody of children and even had a bash at the terrorism debate, ‘Man has sex with pretend dead body’ is unquestionably considered by all to be the most distasteful and ill-advised storyline ever attempted.
To admire the human mind at it’s most woeful, watch this
1) Yoshihiko – The Inflatable Female Sex Doll That Became a Professional Wrestler
Being an inflatable sex doll, Yoshihiko had many obstacles to becoming a professional wrestler. No internal organs, no central nervous system, the fact that she’s made solely of volcanized rubber; these things would defer your average person (or your average inflatable sex doll) from trying to forge a career as a professional wrestler. But not for Yoshihiko; she followed her dream and went on the have a successful livelihood in Japanese wrestling, securing a number of famous wins and a big following in the process. Her career was only cut short when she received a debilitating injury during a match; her head popped after someone performed a knee drop on it.
It may have been a short career, but it was one that remained long in the mind.
Experience the greatness of Yohihiko here. It’s what she would have wanted.
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© 2012
I remember that Edge/Matt Hardy match. Sickening. It’s beyond belief that they let it go ahead. If I recall rightly, one of the commentators actually blame Matt Hardy for initiating the match. All while Matt’s being practically dragged out of the ring by a bunch of refs…