- 4 weeks ago
Fact or fiction? Just when wrestling has the answers, Reddit changes the question.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00So I think it goes without saying, but Reddit is a very strange, weird and wonderful place,
00:05but mostly weird. And when it comes to wrestling, there have been many, many posts about some
00:10obscure, mind-blowing facts that you truly wouldn't believe, but yet somehow appear to be
00:16true. As a time capsule for everything good and bad about wrestling, Reddit is the promised land
00:21for those looking to unearth some crazy facts about the sport that we love so much.
00:25So let's take a look at them. I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:28and these are the 10 weirdest, mind-blowing wrestling facts, according to Reddit.
00:3210. Steve Blackman Nearly Died of Malaria Before His WWE Run
00:36Now, Steve Blackman was, and still is, hard as f***, but he was given one of the toughest battles
00:42of his life long before he broke into the WWE in late 1997. Ironically, it was during his first
00:48attempt at Titan superstardom that a health concern outside of the ring almost took away his livelihood.
00:53After working for Stampede Wrestling in the mid-1980s, he was on the verge of scoring a
00:57full-time contract following some brief television appearances until he contracted
01:01near-fatal malaria during a tour of South Africa in 1989. It left him confined to a bed for almost
01:07two years, with the damage done to his health, size, and mobility enough to put paid to his hopes
01:12and dreams of ever making it in such a physically demanding trade. Until he did, because like I said
01:18before, he's hard as f*** and wasn't going to take no for an answer. In some sweet circular synergy,
01:23it was Stampede Cornerstone's Owen Hart and Brian Pillman that helped him back through the door.
01:28Number 9. Nobody has held the original ECW World Heavyweight title and a major WWE World Heavyweight
01:34title. There's always a caveat with belt stats, but this one only makes the slice of trivia all that
01:40more appealing. WWE World Heavyweight title refers to any iteration of the company's top strap over the
01:46last several years, whilst the original ECW World Heavyweight title of course discounts everything
01:52post-2006. It's an important distinction to make if only to rule out the first dual title holder,
01:58Rob Van Dam. But despite a who's who of industry icons serving as ECW's top star,
02:03none were ever selected to steward things in the WWE. That includes such luminaries as Don Morocco,
02:08Terry Funk, and Taz, as well as a host of hardcore icons that Vince McMahon just seemingly never saw
02:14as one of his top stars. It makes for slightly damning reading, if not all that shocking. Shane
02:19Douglas, arguably the most famous franchise player in the Philadelphia outfit's history,
02:24was reduced to the role of a cartoonish teacher during his short stint.
02:28Number 8. Taylor Swift used to babysit for Jeff Jarrett.
02:32As comfortably the biggest country music-turned-mainstream megastar in music history,
02:36Jeff Jarrett knows a thing or two about making niche concerns huge. Taylor Swift, to a lesser
02:41extent, probably understands this, and it explains why the two interacted on a close personal level
02:46earlier in Swift's career. As Jarrett explained in an interview,
02:49she had a friend in the family and we became family friends. She's in the community. When
02:53mine came out, she came over to the house and Jeremy Borash and I, we were having a creative
02:58meeting downstairs. Taylor would come over and get the girls to take them back to her house,
03:02and they bake cookies and all that kind of stuff. One day, Taylor brought over Joe Jonas.
03:07The mine video is so creative, my daughter Jacqueline looked like a little Taylor. We were out on the
03:11lake, Taylor pulled up, and as bold as she always is, was just like, I want Jacqueline in the video.
03:16Okay, we flew up to Maine where we shot the video, had to turn over your cell phone on set and all
03:20that stuff. It was a good experience for the kids. Ain't she great?
03:24Number 7. Jinder Mahal's single WWE championship reign is longer than all four of edges combined.
03:30The numbers don't lie, do they? And they spell disaster for Jinder Mahal at sacrifice.
03:35If only Scott Steiner were cutting a promo on the modern-day Maharaja back when he was the WWE
03:40champion in 2017. The reign might have actually stood half a chance. Alas, the run will be
03:45remembered for what it was, a panicked multifarious failure that served only to devalue a belt already
03:50suffering questionable prestige. Although it typically wouldn't be, this quirky statistic is
03:55unfortunately most definitely one at Mahal's expense rather than that of the rated-R superstar.
04:00Short title tenures often doomed the holder, but not here. Mahal's 170 days were painfully
04:06unremarkable. And when they weren't boring, they were too offensive to be genuinely heated.
04:11Contrast this with some legacy-enhancing runs against John Cena and others for an Edge character
04:15still very much on his ascendancy in the WWE at the time, and it is crystal clear who got the better deal.
04:21Number six, wrestler talk show grifts. Various. Now the image on screen that you'll see is a young
04:26Mickie James, innocently peering down the lens of a school photograph, not realizing that one day
04:30she'd be a contrast of herself. For a show profiling women that went from nerd to knockout in front of
04:36fictional school friends. This was the story of her appearance on a 2000 episode of Jenny Jones
04:41that's available to watch thanks to multiple uploaders on YouTube. It's extremely, uh, of its time
04:46in the worst possible ways, but at least gives you a semblance of agency to James as a budding
04:51pro wrestler. She wasn't the only one to give that era's crash TV circuit a try, according to
04:57some well-informed Redditors. Apparently Justin Roberts was on Jerry Springer playing a guy whose
05:01girlfriend was cheating on him with his own sister. OK Volume 1 noted that Bill Dundee and JC Ice were
05:07on Springer pretending Jamie was pimping out some kid. And user Mr. Darks recalled watching New Jack
05:12pretend to be a guidance counselor on the Jenny Jones show. Wrestling and daytime scandal shows
05:18have never been so thematically close as they were back then. It's a wonder that almost every
05:23major name ever scribbled down on a format by Vince Russo didn't ply this trade at least once.
05:27Number five, Jeff Jarrett almost took a Val Kilmer Hollywood role. Back to Double J again with comments
05:33from a Cheap Heat interview and big shout out to Fightful for the transcript that made it to Reddit
05:37about an intriguing Neely moment for the King of the Mountain. He said,
05:41That opportunity literally dropped out of thin air sitting in my desk. I'll never net because I've
05:46told the story. I've got an email. They said, hey, Val Kilmer was supposed to read for this part,
05:50but he dropped out. They're like, would you like to read for this? I'm like, yeah, sure. I thought it
05:54was a joke because it was a cold email that I received. Anyway, I did the read in my office and
05:58sent them back and you got it. And they say, oh, yeah, Selena Gomez is in the movie and Vanessa,
06:03all of these stars. And look, I've got five kids, four of them are girls. And, you know,
06:07years ago, Disney Channel and Selena and all that. I was very excited that they were going to get
06:11this opportunity to meet her. But it was a fun part. But I don't have plans to go off to Hollywood.
06:15Read that no plans as being just yet. Number four, Christian Cage was Nick Khan's first
06:20wrestling client. Now most notably tied to one of the most ruthless cost cutting endeavors in WWE
06:25history. Current company president Nick Khan wasn't entirely brand new to the world that he
06:29entered in 2020. According to Redditor Cactus Mac, Christian Cage was Nick Khan's first client as a
06:35sports agent, helped negotiate his move to TNA and was friends with Samoa Joe around the same time.
06:41The specific wrestler details aren't the easiest to track down on Google, which is as good a barometer
06:45as any of how true they may be. But some of Khan's employment history is thanks to his WWE.com
06:51profile. And the following passage would at the very least match up with the timeline of Cage's
06:55departure to Orlando, which reads Khan, a former practicing attorney, transitioned to international
07:00creative management in 2006, where he launched their sports media department and represented the
07:05biggest names in sports broadcasting. He's apparently also lifelong friends with The Rock,
07:09further tethering him to a world that he's rapidly shook up.
07:12Number three, Vince McMahon versus burritos, snow cones, social media, and his own staff.
07:17It's an oldie but a goodie at this point, but Vince McMahon chowing down on a steak wrap and not
07:21realizing that the rest of the world knew it as something different remains as delightful as the
07:26food is delicious. As were these other morsels shared by a user known as Moss Covered Grudunza,
07:31with a loose connection to the original source. And here we go.
07:34This is what they had to say. Just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'll respond
07:38with further when I recall more of them. The steak wrap slash burrito is absolutely true. He would
07:43apparently eat them all the time and never ever call it a burrito. He said he never heard the
07:48snow cone story before. Doesn't mean it isn't true, but he personally never heard it. When it came to
07:52social media, as it was growing, he always wanted The Miz to become one of the first guys they were
07:57really promoting. It sounded like he had a lot of faith in The Miz to be a guy who could run it.
08:01For many other wrestlers, he was indifferent about social media use. This was years and years ago,
08:05so obviously things have changed a bit. He very much did fire people on a whim. Some my old boss
08:10felt were justified, others were not. And then concluded by saying, keep in mind,
08:14these are not first-hand accounts for me. They all come from my former boss. And I realize this
08:18means nothing coming from a random stranger on the internet, but the person I used to work for
08:21very much did work on this for WWE and Vince.
08:252. WrestleMania 19's Main Event is the Only One to Feature Both Wrestlers Using Their Real Names
08:31As nice as it is weird, this cute trivia note adds yet another layer to the neck-breaking onion that
08:36is slash was the terrifying conclusion to the WrestleMania 19 event. Brock Lesnar's shooting
08:41star press was the headline coming out, replacing the panic around Kurt Angle's frazzled fame on the
08:46way in, with very little remembered about an excellent match between two ex-amateurs who desperately
08:51wanted to prove who was the best to turn pro. The fact that both worked with their real names is
08:56such a neat addendum to that. Angle was an ultra-established sports entertainment polymath
09:01by 2003, and Lesnar wasn't far behind him as both The Next Big Thing and The Beast. But going by their
09:07own monikers linked each man to a simpler but no less skilled time. The record is soon to hit its
09:1220th anniversary with no end in sight, not least with the likes of Roman Reigns and Becky Lynch,
09:17sure to be on at least one side of the ring for years to come.
09:20At number one, Finn Balor's six minutes of magic. It apparently took just six minutes for New Japan
09:25pro wrestling bosses to make up their mind on whether or not to sign the future Finn Balor.
09:30It was after Fergal Devitt had worked this match that NJPW scouts allegedly got him an offer to
09:35attend their dojo, thus opening the door for him to kick off a legendary and life-changing run
09:40for the king of sports. This was confirmed by Reddit user and former wrestler Nikita Alonov,
09:45Soviet shooter, who added some additional color.
09:47Holy s**t, I didn't know there was actually a decent video of this show floating around.
09:51I worked this show, might have even been the match right after this. Dave Marquez was there
09:56representing NJPW, and the showcase match from the Inoki Dojo was Alex Kozlov vs. Tommy Chang.
10:02As far as I know, Devitt was the only person to get an offer to go to the dojo directly,
10:06but Chad Allegra, Chance Prophet, and myself all got offers to go to the dojo in LA.
10:11And there we go, my friends. Those were the 10 weirdest mind-blowing wrestling facts,
10:14according to Reddit. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought
10:17about it down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me
10:21over on Twitter, at RetroJ with a zero, or you can swing by Liv and Let's Dice, where I do all of
10:25my streaming outside of work, and it'd be great to see you over there. But before I go, I just want
10:29to say one thing. I hope that you're treating yourself well with love and respect, because you
10:33deserve all of the best things in life, my friend, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you
10:37otherwise, alright? You are a massive legend. I want you to go out there and absolutely smash your life
10:41goals today. I believe in you. As always, I've been Jules. You have been awesome.
10:45Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
Comments