Top 10 Times Wrestlers Actually Got Hurt

The average wrestling fan could certainly be forgiven for not being familiar with Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, a.k.a. FMW. However, a recent episode of “Dark Side of the Ring” exposed “Onita’s FMW” to a new audience, while simultaneously evoking a lot of memories for the diehard wrestling faithful. This match was one of FMW’s most infamous, a deathmatch featuring a ring set ablaze, with seemingly no backup plan in case the worst should happen. Well, the worst did happen, with FMW founder Atsushi Onita and hardcore legend Sabu suffering severe burns while trying to fight in and around an area that was basically one giant ring of fire.

The aim of an average pro wrestling match is to give the audience a show, tell a story, and do so as safely as possible. We use the word “average,” because Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman aren’t your average competitors, and their match at the “Royal Rumble” 2018 featured one memorable bit of reality. Things first went off script when Strowman hit Lesnar with an errant knee. It was accidental, of course, but Brock didn’t take kindly to it, and decided to respond. That response was a quick jab to Braun, and a reply to “slow the F down.” Backstage reports assure us that both men delivered quick apologies after the fact, but we definitely wouldn’t want to take such shots from either man.

Turnbuckle spots are an everyday part of the pro wrestling experience. Competitors dive off them, fall off them, and use them to inflict damage to their opponents. Unfortunately, they’ve also served as places where unintentional injury can occur, such as our next entry involving AEW’s Cash Wheeler. Cash was competing in a tag team match alongside his partner Dax Harwood, when a fall from the turnbuckle went horribly wrong. Wheeler got caught on the way down, and severely injured his forearm, rendering him unable to finish the match. Thankfully, Wheeler is back in the ring now, but this was still one very scary spot.

The term “botch” is used to describe a mistake in the wrestling business, an in-ring gaffe that’s not supposed to happen. Sometimes, these can be innocuous, and we the audience never notice a thing. Other times, there are some long-term consequences, such as the 2002 “Smackdown” match when Brock Lesnar accidentally broke the neck of “Hardcore” Bob Holly. Although the rumor for years was that Holly “sandbagged” Lesnar, intentionally dropping his weight to make lifting up harder and more awkward, recent interviews with Bob have set the record straight. Holly claims that he just couldn’t reach up to grab Brock’s neck for proper execution, and they ended up coming down at the wrong angle, resulting in the cringe-inducing footage you see today.

A lot of pre-production work goes into a huge, pro wrestling pay-per-view, with many working parts coming together to bring you the final show. Unfortunately, sometimes important details can be missed…such as not replacing a trick panel with sugar glass, as opposed to real glass. This is what happened during a match between Shane McMahon and Kurt Angle at the 2001 “King of the Ring.” The spot demanded for Shane to be tossed through by Angle, but the glass simply refused to break. This caused McMahon to take some sickeningly real bumps on top of his head and neck, before the glass finally broke. Of course, this didn’t make things any better for Angle or McMahon because, you know, it was REAL GLASS.

Japan can be a haven for diehard fans of pro wrestling, a place for some of the greatest matches of all time. Unfortunately, the “strong style” culture employed by many Japanese wrestlers can sometimes come back to haunt them. Case in point? Katsuyori Shibata, who made it a point to deliver headbutts as part of his move set. Unfortunately, Shibata went to the well one too many times during an IWGP Heavyweight title match with Kazuchika Okada in 2017. His headbutt went over fine in the ring, but Shibata collapsed backstage afterwards, with official word being a subdural hematoma. Many figured his career was over, although Shibata DID wrestle a brief match with Zack Sabre, Jr. at New Japan’s G1 Climax in October, 2021.

The ladder match, by design, can be super dangerous. However, usually what we see in the ring is the result of hours of planning and rehearsal. You can’t plan for everything, though, and Joey Mercury found this out the hard way. A see-saw spot from “WWE Armageddon” 2006 involving the ladder went pear-shaped when Mercury took the tool square in the face. Mercury was justifiably pulled from the match after the end result of a shattered nose and orbital bone, while the image from the immediate aftermath is one that fans will never forget.

Picture it: you’re Triple H, and you’re heading to work a tag team match for May 21st, 2001 episode of WWE’s “Monday Night Raw.” You move to break up a hold placed on your partner, and something goes horribly wrong. The wrestler formerly known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley suffered a severe quad tear during his match, derailing his career and requiring months of rehabilitation. What’s even crazier is that Trips finished the match, and even had the guts to take Chris Jericho’s “Walls of Jericho” finisher, a move that directly affects the quadriceps. Triple H: we salute you.

The legacy of this epic incident from “King of the Ring” 1998 is such that you don’t even have to be a wrestling fan to know what we’re discussing. It’s been meme’d and discussed to death, but if you’ve never seen it, go and search Mick Foley’s harrowing fall from the top of “Hell in a Cell.” Actually, search for them both, because this entry boasts the sizzle and the steak. The first, when The Undertaker tosses Foley off the cage onto a desk below, looks terrible, because it was. However, it’s the second fall, when ‘Taker throws Foley through the cage into the ring, that Foley says hurt the most. As if the tooth sticking out of his nose just didn’t tell the entire story.

New Jack may be gone, but his legacy as the hardest of the hardcore remains secure. Want proof? Well, take his feud with Vic Grimes, for example. First, there was the infamous “Danbury Fall,” from ECW’s “Living Dangerously,” where a hesitant Grimes resulted in a drop spot causing life threatening injuries to both men. That’s nothing compared to the time both men wrestled again in XPW, and New Jack went into business for himself. How, you may ask? Well, from a very real taser, and a very deliberate toss off an incredibly high scaffolding. Thankfully, Grimes hit the ropes and bounced back into the ring, otherwise, this would’ve been a very different sort of end to our list.