- 14 hours ago
Those times where the wrestling business really did blur the lines of reality.
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00:00Everyone settle down because yes, we're doing it.
00:03Is it a work? Is it a shoot? Is it a woot?
00:05We'll never know, even though we always find out.
00:08What? Dunno.
00:09However, the work shoot is something that wrestling companies have done a lot to differing success.
00:13So, I'm someone from what culture?
00:15Please do hit that subscribe button, it'll make you feel good.
00:18And this is the 10 most elaborate works in wrestling history.
00:21Number 10, Brock Lesnar Pulverizes Randy Orton.
00:24Never forget that if he wanted to, Brock Lesnar could destroy everybody in WWE for real.
00:30They could even go as far to say that there are few more legit warriors in history than Brock,
00:34which is why at SummerSlam 2016, the Beast was told to smash Randy Orton's head in the hard way and bust him open.
00:41Yep.
00:41This even tied into the finish as Lesnar was awarded a TKO victory, and this looked so real,
00:46other wrestlers thought Brock had just decided to do this because why the flub not?
00:49Chris Jericho even confronted him afterwards enraged that he had just ignored the code and was taking liberties.
00:55It turned out he hadn't.
00:56This was all pre-planned, and Vince McMahon and Triple H had to break these two up as somebody shouted,
01:00It's a work!
01:01Now, it seems to me that maybe we shouldn't be beating people up so badly, you scare the locker room half to death.
01:06But what do I know?
01:07I can't even grow hair.
01:09Number 9, Jeff Jarrett Attacks a Fan.
01:11In a TNA Slammiversary 2005, Jarrett was all ready to take on AJ Styles in the King of the Mountain match,
01:17along with about 45 other people.
01:19Before the pay-per-view went live, though, which is where this gets really interesting,
01:22Jeff was at ringside when a masked audience member insulted him, so Double J told him to get in the squared circle.
01:28As they did do this, Jarrett kicked the crap out of him, leaving Jeff to be arrested and missed the main event.
01:34Some will still tell you this was the real deal, but the dude was Sal Renaro,
01:38a wrestler who after the fact competed for the likes of Ring of Honor and the NWA.
01:42It also handily meant Jarrett was out the way so Raven could return and win the world title.
01:46So it was an elaborate work, although you can't fault TNA, they did it.
01:50People still think this was a serious situation.
01:53Number 8, The Outsiders Arrive in WCW.
01:56When Scott Hall turned up on Nitro on the 27th of May 1996 and acted like he had broken into the building,
02:02it was just awesome.
02:04It got even better two weeks later because Kevin Nash then turned up,
02:07and it really felt like Razor, Ramon and Diesel had broken ranks and decided to kick WCW's ass.
02:12And sure, after a short while it was obvious they were on the payroll,
02:15but that didn't matter, we planted that seed and we're gonna let it grow.
02:19Even them using their real names was cool because people didn't do that in the mid-90s.
02:22Everyone had to have some ridiculous title, like Duke the Dumpster Drozzy,
02:27and yet here were two guys just being themselves, who blurred the lines perfectly.
02:31The commentary team added to this as well by shouting things like,
02:34they're not meant to be here, and even refusing to mention them by name.
02:38And it sparked a huge ball of nonsense as the WWF then started to act like Diesel and Razor were coming back.
02:43It caused such commotion, Hall and Nash got more money from WCW,
02:47which was hilarious as Vince McMahon was just throwing his copyright muscle around
02:51and was about to bring back fake versions of these characters.
02:55So yes, this means World Championship Wrestling worked themselves into a shoot.
02:59They couldn't make it up.
03:00Number 7, The Return of Matt Hardy
03:01I never really want a story to be born out of an affair, but hey-ho!
03:05In 2005, this is what we got.
03:07Because yes, in what is a heart-wrenching tale,
03:09Matt Hardy found out that his girlfriend Lita had been cheating on him with best friend Edge.
03:14My word.
03:15This was like something from a soap opera, and understandably,
03:17Matt was so broken, ironically, he went online to let loose.
03:22WWE didn't like that, so he was let go.
03:25Damn.
03:25As you can imagine, the fanbase thought that was BS and started to make noise about this at every show.
03:30Edge got booed, Hardy chants rang out in all of the arenas,
03:33and two months later, this was all switched around as Matt was hired back.
03:37Madness.
03:37At that point, it was obvious they'd come to an agreement,
03:39but in the interim, Hardy was still turning up on programs unannounced,
03:43grabbing the microphone and shouting things like Ring of Honor into it.
03:46This was enough to convince some people that maybe he had lost it,
03:49and who could blame him?
03:50To be fair, this was a great way to play off a real-life situation and make it wrestling,
03:54although their first match still irks me.
03:56The cheater beat the cheatees so badly,
03:58the referee had to stop the thing.
04:01I'm pretty sure it should have been the other way around.
04:036. The End of WCW Hulk Hogan
04:05Remember that tweet everybody still laughs about from Hulk Hogan
04:08when he went on about not working yourself into a shoot, brother?
04:11Well, he should know about this, because he did it in 2000.
04:13Happening at WCW's bash at the beach, the idea to begin with was dumb.
04:17Hulk defeated Jeff Jarrett for the WCW world title after Jeff laid down for Hogan,
04:21because he thought this whole situation was crap behind the scenes.
04:25Vince Russo was involved too, and the Hulkster yelled at him before storming off.
04:29But later in the show, Russo cut his own promo, and when Hulk heard this, he wasn't happy.
04:34He decided Vince had gone too far, sued the company, and never returned.
04:40Yes, that is how it all ended.
04:42Unsurprisingly, WCW would be out of business 8 months later, and it was due to stupid things like this.
04:46No one understood what was going on, and casual fans must have felt like they'd been slapped.
04:50It was so non-inclusive, it was ridiculous.
04:52I swear they forgot the first and foremost thing about wrestling, is it's meant to be fun.
04:57Number 5, MJF vs AEW
04:59This one is still going on now as I speak, and man, they have done a good job.
05:04In 2022, the kayfabe line has been blurred, and no one knows what the hell is going on.
05:09It's been a very well executed plan, or maybe it's real, I've no clue.
05:13In terms of what we've seen on TV, MJF is furious that he's been overlooked due to the influx of ex-WWE talent,
05:19so much so, he no-showed a meet and greet, and almost missed his match with Wardlow at Double or Nothing.
05:25Even before then, there were rumblings that he was unhappy over money,
05:28and that come 2024, when his contract expired, he'd be more than happy to speak to WWE.
05:34As of right now, Maxwell's merchandise has been pulled, and it's not even on the website.
05:39Ultimately, who cares, because this has become the talk of the town,
05:42and underlines exactly what wrestling is, and what makes it so compelling anyway.
05:46Number 4, The Russian Nightmare, Nikita Koloff
05:48Nikita Koloff was an excellent heel.
05:51A Bruton Russian grappler, he is an example of how to book a bad guy,
05:55and from the moment he was introduced in 1984, everybody bored him as a monster,
06:00mostly because that's how he was presented.
06:02He only ever spoke in Russian, which American audiences hated in the 80s,
06:05due to the ongoing Cold War, and he for everyone.
06:08Dusty Rhodes, Magnum Thierre, Ric Flair, Sting.
06:11Throughout all of that, he never let his foreign stance go either, even outside the show.
06:15And yet, in reality, this man was Nelson Scott Simpson from Minnesota.
06:21Amazing.
06:21Nelson was just so committed to the work, he changed his name to Nikita Koloff so nobody could figure it out,
06:26and he learned Russian to get this across.
06:28If you want to say this is next-level stuff, you'd be right,
06:31because for years fans thought he was from the East, even if they knew wrestling was predetermined.
06:35That's where sports entertainment is at its best too.
06:38You know the deal, and are super smart, and yet you're still just a tiny bit unsure.
06:43More power to this guy.
06:44Number 3.
06:45The First Summer of Punk
06:46Less chatted about for obvious reasons, CM Punk's reign of terror as Ring of Honor champion in 2005 is a work of art.
06:53Tapping into how the internet worked, it came out that Punk had signed with WWE,
06:57just as CM was preparing to fight Austin Aries for the Ring of Honor world title.
07:01This was at Death by Dishonor 3, so everybody assumed Punk was going to lose,
07:05and given how awesome he'd been for the promotion, fans treated him like an outgoing hero.
07:09We then used all of that for the ultimate swerve, however, because not only did Punk win the belt,
07:14he then cut a promo on the fans and turned heel.
07:17This is flubbing great.
07:19It totally took everybody off guard behind the scenes, CM had gotten WWE to agree he could finish off his Ring of Honor work,
07:24but this gave us two months of madness.
07:27You really have to see it.
07:28Eventually he would drop the title to James Gibson before moving on,
07:31and this is how you make the jump, the ultimate transition.
07:35Number 2. Everything Jerry Lawler and Andy Coughlin
07:37Superb, this.
07:39Even years later, you can argue that it's never been topped.
07:42In fact, Jerry Lawler and Andy Coughlin were so dedicated to this whole thing,
07:45it was only after the comedian's death that it was revealed it had been a work.
07:49Incredible.
07:49Starting as Andy had been a lifelong wrestling fan and wanted to get involved,
07:53he declared himself the intergender champion and started beating up women and acting like he was the king.
07:58Eventually Lawler took offense to that, obviously.
08:01Who decided to smash Kaufman with a pile driver, which broke his neck?
08:05Whoops.
08:05The taxi star sold this perfectly, as he would go everywhere in a neck brace,
08:09with all this peaking on the 1982 David Letterman show where they just went off.
08:13F-bombs, thrown coffee, massive slaps.
08:16Even Letterman thought they had lost their tempers.
08:18It's quite the thing to see.
08:20You need to go and watch all of this if you haven't, because the pair basically tricked the world.
08:24And sure, it was easier to do that 40 years ago, but still, as silly as it sounds, this was art.
08:30Number 1.
08:31The Loose Cannon
08:31If we are talking about working in the entire wrestling business, nobody beats Brian Pillman.
08:37And I mean no one.
08:38Starting towards the end of 95, when Pillman had been brought into The Four Horsemen,
08:42the dude just started acting like a madman.
08:44He began blurring the lines even without permission,
08:47such as calling Kevin Sullivan the WCW booker live on air.
08:50And when he was fired in 1996, people thought something was up.
08:54They were right.
08:54While we didn't know it at the time,
08:56Brian had convinced Eric Bischoff to give him his release so he could run amok on the indies
09:00before coming back a bigger star.
09:02All of this had to be legit so nobody would know otherwise.
09:05And while Pillman did go to ECW,
09:07he also used this to convince the WWF to give him more money,
09:11and he went there instead.
09:12This guy.
09:13Know of any other elaborate works in wrestling history?
09:16Make sure you let us know in the comments below,
09:17and don't forget to like the video, share the video, and subscribe.
09:20Then head over to whatculture.com,
09:21where you can read articles like this with your eyes.
09:23Make sure you follow us on social media at whatculturewwe or at simular316.
09:27And we do have other videos I checked,
09:30and one of them is just for you.
09:32My name is Simon from WhatCulture.
09:33Thank you very much for joining me as always.
09:35And as I've asked before, and as I'll ask again,
09:37did I record this in my pants?
09:39Maybe I did.
09:40Maybe I didn't.
09:41Or maybe it's a worked shoot.
09:43That didn't make any sense.
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