It has been well-documented through the years just how dangerous skilled wrestling really is. For every one who tries to make use of the classic argument of “wrestling is fake,” there’s one other one that has experienced just how real the business may be. In spite of everything, WWE doesn’t play the “don’t do that at home” video package on their TV shows for fun. They play it because they understand how one mistake can change the course of somebody’s life ceaselessly.
Careers have been ended right away, lives have even been taken resulting from freak accidents, and considering that there’s a whole documentary series called “Dark Side of the Ring” that has run for six seasons and shows no signs of slowing down, it’s secure to say that skilled wrestling is an industry that can chew people up and spit them out just as quickly.
Nonetheless, there are some wrestlers, a number of of that are still working today, who’ve got here inside millimeters of getting their careers ended, but by the grace of whatever god they imagine in, or just by dumb luck, they’ve been in a position to come back from serious injuries and never only live on, but proceed to have successful careers afterwards.
That’s what we’re going to be talking about today. The wrestlers who’ve almost had their careers ended through major injuries, and specifically, the wrestlers who’ve caused said injuries. Whether it was by accident, or in some cases on purpose, these performers are amongst the preferred of their respected eras, but for as skilled as they could be, even they’re guilty of probably taking someone’s profession away from them. Listed below are just a number of the wrestlers who caused injuries that almost ruined their careers.
Owen Hart
Perhaps probably the most famous example of a wrestler injuring someone to the purpose where they almost took away their ability to walk, Owen Hart was beloved by each the fans and the those that he worked with within the ring resulting from how good he was. A continuing skilled whose legacy still lives on to today, with many individuals citing him as an inspiration and influence on their very own in-ring styles, making him one of the necessary wrestlers of his era in the method. Nonetheless, for nearly as good as Hart was, he was also the rationale why Stone Cold Steve Austin’s profession ended far before it was speculated to.
On the 1997 WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view, Hart and Austin’s match for the WWE Intercontinental Championship took a scary turn when Hart hit a Tombstone Piledriver to Austin. The one difference between what Hart did and what fans would expect from someone like The Undertaker or Kane is that as a substitute of dropping to his knees, he would land a sit-out variant, giving Austin no time to organize himself, which ultimately led to Austin being dropped directly on his head, breaking his neck and temporarily paralyzing him in the method.
By some miracle, Austin finished the match but was never the identical, and while he was in a position to power through resulting from his popularity and importance to the WWE product on the time, Austin would eventually have neck surgery in 1999, before retiring from wrestling in 2003. Austin was also offended on the proven fact that Hart only ever called him once to apologize, and didn’t show an excessive amount of sympathy for causing the injury, causing Austin and Hart’s relationship to sour, something that was never rectified as Hart would tragically pass away on the 1999 Over The Edge pay-per-view.
The Undertaker
The Undertaker is probably probably the most respected man to have ever stepped foot in a WWE ring, working for the corporate for 30 uninterrupted years before retiring in 2020. The Deadman was known for being a bit snug within the ring when the time called for it, but he never went out of his method to intentionally hurt anyone, With that said, one freak accident that The Undertaker was involved in almost led to the profession of certainly one of WWE’s most vital Superstars being ended.
On the 1998 Royal Rumble, The Undertaker was wrestling Shawn Michaels for the WWE Championship in a casket match, with the massive wood casket being situated next to the ring. Through the match, The Deadman gave a backdrop to Michaels, who went excessive rope and looked to clear the casket on the best way down. Nonetheless, Michaels clipped the casket along with his lower back, causing an injury that will change into so severe that The Heartbreak Kid was told by doctors that he would never wrestle again as he had herniated two discs and crushed a 3rd.
The Undertaker was never blamed for causing Michaels to get hurt, with Michaels even stating in an interview back in 2000 that his back was causing him loads of pain before the match, and clipping the casket was simply the ultimate straw that his body could take. The Heartbreak Kid also noted that wrestling an already injured Steve Austin at WrestleMania 14 didn’t help matters, and he would step away from WWE immediately after. Michaels would eventually return to motion in 2002, having one other eight years within the ring before retiring in 2010 after losing a Streak vs. Profession match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania 26. Just don’t mention Crown Jewel 2018 to anyone.
The Rock
Unprotected chair shots have been outlawed in most corporations world wide, and when you will still have the occasional rogue chair hit, those chairs have either been gimmicked, shaved down, or weren’t strong enough for use as a chair in the primary place. Nonetheless, back in 1999, the WWE’s famed “Attitude Era” was stuffed with grown men being given massive concussions by taking a steel chair to the top, and The Rock was someone who could swing a chair.
On the 1999 Royal Rumble, The Rock challenged Mick “Mankind” Foley for the WWE Championship in an I Quit match, with The People’s Champion walking away victorious. It is a match that has change into infamous for many individuals given the way it ended, with The Rock handcuffing Foley’s hands behind his back, and giving him nearly a dozen unprotected chair shots to the top, with the ultimate one being to the back of Foley’s head.
For a person who has literally won a tournament called “The King of the Deathmatch,” even Foley thought that The Rock went a bit too far with the chair shots, and as much as Foley was willing to do it in an effort to get “The People’s Champion” over as a heel, he wasn’t joyful about taking that quantity of punishment in front of his family, who were sitting at ringside. In brief, The Rock didn’t technically cause any substantial injuries that will put Foley on the shelf because the two men would proceed to feud up until WrestleMania 15. With that said, this was certainly one of the ultimate times where Foley took an infinite amount of punishment before attempting to retire just over a 12 months later, a retirement that will stick for around 4 years before Foley began making sporadic appearances in WWE starting in 2004.
Dean Malenko and a couple of Cold Scorpio
Stepping away from WWE momentarily as we turn our attention to the land of utmost. For an organization that literally had “blood and guts” written on the ring skirt, a number of the most serious injuries that happened in ECW were complete accidents, and within the case of Dean Malenko and a couple of Cold Scorpio, they almost ended the profession of somebody who would go on to be an ECW legend with a regular wrestling move.
In the summertime of 1995, Malenko and Scorpio were wrestling Taz and Eddie Guerrero at an ECW live event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Malenko and Scorpio would deliver a Spike Piledriver to Taz within the corner of the ring. Taz immediately knew something was unsuitable and managed to tag Guerrero into the match, who would finish the match as “The Human Suplex Machine” was in agony on the apron, but didn’t exactly know what was unsuitable with himself.
Once the event was over, Taz, with the assistance of Tommy Dreamer, walked to the closest hospital to get himself checked out, and in keeping with Dreamer on “The Rise and Fall of ECW” documentary, the doctor was in complete shock on the proven fact that Taz had simply walked himself into the emergency room, stating that there was no way he could have done that as his test results showed that Taz had broken his neck.
Taz has since taken the blame for the move going unsuitable, stating that he didn’t give himself enough time to organize for the move, and that he has never held any sick feelings towards Malenko and Scorpio. After recovering from the injury, Taz would go on to overcome ECW as the corporate’s World Heavyweight Champion, but would slowly transition into retirement resulting from problems along with his neck.
Seth Rollins
Seth Rollins had a really eventful few years after breaking away from The Shield in 2014. He became the crown jewel of The Authority, he was the one man as much as that time to carry the WWE World Heavyweight and WWE United States Championships concurrently, and only had his momentum stopped by his own injury that happened at a live event at the top of 2015. Nonetheless, there was one particular trend that followed Rollins around during this time, that being that he was fairly unsafe to work with resulting from how many individuals he had inadvertently injured.
Rollins would famously break John Cena’s nose during a match on “WWE Raw,” an injury that went viral for the way graphic it was, but he would make a full recovery very quickly for the straightforward proven fact that he’s John Cena, and he can never be kept on the shelf for too long. At SummerSlam 2016, Rollins powerbombed Finn Balor into the barricade along with the ring, resulting in Balor tearing his shoulder and missing six months of motion, but in between these two injuries, a much scarier moment took place.
On the Night of Champions pay-per-view in 2015, Rollins faced Sting within the essential event, with Rollins hitting his trademark Buckle Bomb to “The Icon.” Shortly afterward it was clear something wasn’t right as Sting began stumbling and collapsing during his moves. This was resulting from Sting suffering a serious neck injury in consequence of the Buckle Bomb, an injury that will force Sting into retirement. Rollins was reportedly distraught at the concept of probably ending Sting’s profession, but “The Icon” has never blamed Rollins for what happened as he simply saw it as a freak accident from which he would eventually make a full recovery.
Jeff Hardy
Jeff Hardy is one of the popular WWE Superstars of all time resulting from his unique look, his love of ladders, and his ability to fly off of said ladders. It’s almost impressive that through the years, Hardy has never had any serious injuries during a ladder or TLC match, but on one night in 2006, he would permanently alter the profession, and face, of a fellow WWE Superstar.
At Armageddon 2006, Jeff and his brother Matt Hardy joined MNM, the team of Joey Mercury and Johnny Nitro, in making the originally scheduled WWE Tag Team Championship match between the champions Paul London and Brian Kendrick, and the challengers William Regal and Dave Taylor, a four-way ladder match. Through the match, Matt held MNM’s faces over a ladder that was arrange like a Teeter Totter, which sprung up and knocked Mercury and Nitro down when Jeff landed on the ladder. Nitro walked away virtually unharmed, but Mercury was the other
Mercury’s face virtually exploded as the sting of the ladder legitimately hit him within the face, breaking his nose and orbital bone, which required him to recover from 30 stitches after the event but opted to not have surgery. Nonetheless, this may worsen the drug dependency Mercury had been scuffling with since he was 15, and he was released by WWE three months after his injury.
Mercury almost lost his house following his release but received help from former WWE Champion CM Punk. The great fortune put Mercury on the road to recovery, leading to him becoming sober and being rehired by WWE in 2010 within the role of a producer and later an on-screen character as a part of The Authority, before departing again in 2017.
AJ Styles
The funny thing about wrestling is that some moves that look extremely dangerous to the naked eye can often be a number of the safest to perform and take, while the best of moves may be those to legitimately injure someone, and even end someone’s profession. When someone looks at AJ Styles performing the Styles Clash, they could think that it’s a reasonably easy move to take and perform as Styles is just falling forward while holding on to a different performer. Nonetheless, the Styles Clash has earned a popularity as being one of the dangerous moves in wrestling for the only real proven fact that it has injured a variety of people.
So as to take the move, the wrestler who’s being held the other way up must tilt their head back so far as possible. In the event that they do the other and tuck their chin, they may have all of their very own body weight, and Styles himself, come down on their neck. The likes of Roderick Strong, James Ellsworth, Corey Graves, and Frankie Kazarian all made this error but managed to flee with relatively no problems. Nonetheless, two men have had their necks broken taking the move.
Former WWE Superstar Yoshitatsu broke his neck taking the move from Styles on the 2014 Power Struggle event in NJPW, and would miss nearly 18 months of motion, but would eventually make a full recovery. Nonetheless, British wrestler Lionheart had his neck broken within the Styles Clash during a match in 2014, causing him to miss a 12 months of motion, despite being told by doctors that he would never walk again. Lionheart even wrote a letter to Styles himself asking him to stop using the move given how dangerous it was, but Styles will still use it sporadically to today. Lionheart died in 2019.
Brock Lesnar
Despite looking like he could gorilla press all the solar system, Brock Lesnar has actually earned the popularity of being certainly one of the safest employees in WWE history, despite the proven fact that he has been permitted to cave within the skulls of each Randy Orton and Roman Reigns through the years. With that said, his initial run with WWE between 2002 and 2004 saw Lesnar break someone’s neck on three separate occasions.
Amazingly, two of those occasions happened with Kurt Angle, a person who has a famously injured neck as he won an Olympic Gold Medal in 1996 while his neck was still broken. Lesnar broke Angle’s neck by ramming him into the turnbuckle during a match, causing Angle’s head to snap sideways and crack his neck, while the opposite time got here when he hit Angle on the highest of the top with a steel chair on an episode of “WWE SmackDown,” breaking his neck even further.
The opposite occasion, and the much more infamous certainly one of the three, got here on an episode of “SmackDown” in 2002 when Lesnar wrestled Hardcore Holly. Lesnar got Holly up for a Powerbomb, but after Holly didn’t go all the best way up, Lesnar simply dropped Holly on the highest of his neck, breaking it immediately. Holly would go on to miss a 12 months of motion, and while Holly would make a full recovery and return to WWE in 2003, many individuals wondered if Lesnar did the move on purpose to show Holly a lesson for potentially sandbagging him. This wasn’t the case as Holly would later reveal in a 2018 interview that he and Lesnar are still good friends, the timing of the move was off for each men and Lesnar would check in on him often after his surgery.
Stone Cold Steve Austin
Bringing every little thing full circle is a moment that not many individuals find out about resulting from what happened to Steve Austin in his match with Owen Hart, but a few years earlier, Austin did something eerily just like what Hart did to him.
In September 1992, Austin challenged Masahiro Chono for the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship at a Recent Japan Pro Wrestling event in Yokohama, Japan. Chono was certainly one of the most important stars in NJPW on the time, while Austin had established himself as probably the greatest wrestlers on the WCW roster at the moment, making this first-time-ever match a must-see showdown. Within the closing stages, Chono went for a Tombstone Piledriver, but Austin countered it with certainly one of his own, and before Chono could get himself a moment to organize himself, Austin sat right down to deliver the move as a substitute of dropping to his knees, causing Chono’s head to hit the canvas and breaking his neck upon impact.
When you put Austin’s move on Chono, and Hart’s move on Austin next to one another, it’s scarily similar and each ended up with the identical result. Fortunately, Chono was in a position to finish the match, and since he’s tougher than most wrestlers put together, he barely missed any motion and would proceed wrestling for NJPW within the months and years after the match with Austin. Nonetheless, when Chono would eventually win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in 1998, he could be forced to vacate the title as his neck issues that had gone untreated for thus long had caught as much as him. While Austin’s profession had a long time taken off it resulting from his neck problems, Chono would wrestle often until 2014, and after successful spinal stenosis surgery, he officially announced his retirement in February 2023.
