Pro wrestling is very weird.
So weird, in fact, that for over 20 years, one of the most popular wrestlers in the world
was an undead cowboy who once declared himself to be the Lord of Darkness, crucified his
opponents on live television, and then got really into Limp Bizkit.
But while you'd expect that level of bizarreness from interview segments and backstage promos,
the weird stuff doesn't stop once the bell rings.
From illegal hypnosis to dilapidated boats, these are the strangest things that ever happened
during a wrestling match.
Player Uno gets paused
There’s an almost endless list of strange wrestling moments that originated in Chikara,
the independent promotion that's equally inspired by lucha libre and superhero comics.
This is a company where matches occasionally devolve into baseball games, so when things
in Chikara get weird, they get really weird.
Just look at Player Uno, an 8-bit video game themed wrestler who wore an NES controller
on his pants and occasionally found himself at the mercy of the pause button.
Every now and then, an opponent would manage to hit him in the right spot, and Uno would
react accordingly, whether it was punching opponents when they hit A and B, or "pausing"
in mid-match whenever anyone managed to hit Start.
The best part?
While he was paused, Uno would remain completely still even while being attacked by his opponents.
It was only once they hit start again to un-pause him that he'd suddenly take all the damage.
The longest match ever
Here's another Chikara classic: In 2004, Darkness Crabtree, a masked senior citizen who frequently
fell asleep during matches, faced off against Lance Steel, a time-traveling knight who once
formed a tag-team with his own future self, in a match billed as having no count-outs
and no time limit.
As the match began, they locked up, and then stayed locked up as they, and the referee,
went through the ropes and left the building, only for a shrugging cameraman to return a
few minutes later, claiming to have lost track of them.
With the wrestlers nowhere to be found, the show continued.
One full day later, Crabtree and Steel wrestled their way back into the ring at Chikara's
next event, which was taking place 30 miles down the road from the previous night.
With no count-outs and no time limit, the match from the previous show was technically
still going on, until Steel finally locked on a submission hold to win with an official
time of 23 hours, 39 minutes.
Illegal technique
Combat Zone Wrestling is mostly known for ultra-violent matches like its annual Tournament
of Death, but in 2010, it played host to what one commentator called "the most illegal thing
I've seen in the history of wrestling."
It happened when the Runaways, Joe Gacy and Ryan Slater, took on the Osirian Portal — the
tag team of Ophidian and Amasis — and found themselves on the receiving end of a secret
technique.
Using his snake-like movements, Ophidian hypnotized his opponents, causing the match to quickly
devolve into a dance-off.
Sadly, the Portal would lose the tournament in the finals, but the clip of the entire
CZW roster being mesmerized into a dance party quickly went viral.
Furious at being humiliated in front of the entire world, the Runaways would later ambush
the Osirian Portal at another event... which ended exactly the way you’d expect.
An eye for an eye
Not every weird moment in pro wrestling history is a goofy fun time for the performers and
the audience.
Case in point: the infamous 1988 incident where Dusty Rhodes had his eye "gouged out"
by "Animal" from tag team duo The Road Warriors.
When it came time to turn The Road Warriors into bad guys, Dusty - a behind-the-scenes
booker and the National Wrestling Association's resident working-class hero - figured the
best way to do that would be to have them "blind" him with a spike from the duo's trademark
shoulder pads.
But TBS TV execs forbade so-called "blading" and Dusty was fired a few months later for
the violent stunt - but not before promising his revenge while sporting an eye patch.
Needless to say, he returned a few years later after a stint in WWF.
Shooting Antonio
In a sport where the outcome is predetermined, one of the weirdest things that can happen
is a match suddenly turning into a legitimate fight.
Wrestlers call this a “shoot,” and one of the most famous happened in Tokyo in 1977,
when Antonio Inoki took on the Great Antonio.
Despite sharing a name, the two wrestlers had almost nothing in common.
Inoki was an accomplished martial artist who once fought Muhammad Ali to a draw by kicking
him repeatedly in the legs.
He was the progenitor of "Strong Style," a form of pro wrestling that involves making
very real contact within the bounds of a scripted fight.
Great Antonio, on the other hand, was a French-Canadian strongman with what wrestling scholar David
Shoemaker called "a questionable grasp on reality."
The match was billed as Inoki taking on an unstoppable foreign monster, but that’s
not how it worked out.
After four minutes of Great Antonio ignoring Inoki’s offense and hitting him with sloppy
blows to the neck, Inoki finally snapped, executed a quick takedown, and started kicking
his 450-pound opponent in the head well after he's visibly knocked out.
It's scary to see, especially knowing it was the Great Antonio's last match, even though
he'd live for another 35 years.
As for Inoki, he’d go on to retire from wrestling and become a respected politician
in Japan.
Fourth-grader throwdown
Kenny Omega has a cult following in America, but he's been a top star in Japan for years,
and a recent match against Japanese superstar Kazuchika Okada was rated by wrestling critic
Dave Meltzer as a record-breaking seven-star match — on a scale of one to five.
In 2011, however, his most compelling feud wasn’t against a heavyweight champion.
It was with a nine year-old girl named Haruka.
In a match where he played a despicably overconfident villain, Omega hit some brutal backbreakers
and even threatened to hurl his tiny opponent into the crowd.
Even though she got some offense, he eventually had her set up for his devastating finishing
move … just in time for the bell to ring and signal a time-limit draw.
Despite some reprehensible heel tactics, the match is a favorite even among casual wrestling
fans, with Omega not being able to score a victory after five solid minutes of bully
tactics.
It might not be the end of the story, though: In 2015, Omega tweeted that Haruka had been
in touch about a rematch, leaving fans clamoring for the sequel.
The Final Deletion
The Final Deletion might be the most amazing match in the history of pro wrestling… for
certain values of amazing.
After years of being overshadowed by his brother and tag-team partner Jeff, Matt Hardy became
“broken,” claiming to be inhabited by a spirit from the future that basically turned
him into a full-on Doctor Doom-like supervillain.
"Brother Nero I knew you’d come."
The brothers confronted each other in increasingly weird vignettes that occasionally involved
fake babies, but it all came to a head in "The Final Deletion," which was literally
a wrestling match that happened outside Matt Hardy’s house.
In addition to being the most North Carolina brother-fight anyone has ever seen, it’s
also a weird sci-fi horror movie at the same time.
It's literally two guys shooting Roman candles at each other and hiding behind a bass boat
because one of them messed up the other's lawn, but also there's a magic lake that can
literally resurrect the dead.
And the best part?
It's an actual official wrestling match with a very confused referee who counts the pinfall.
If wrestling is an art form, then this is its sistine chapel, painted by two brothers
trying to set each other on fire in someone’s backyard.
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