20 Pro Wrestling Firsts You Need To Know

4. On-Screen Middle Finger

Wrestling Bladejob
WWE.com

In many ways, it is the most iconic gesture of the entire Attitude Era. Stone Cold Steve Austin, standing above the turnbuckles, gesturing to the adoring thousands with his middle fingers high in the air. The late 1990s saw a general shift in acceptance of such things on television, and professional wrestling was quick to embrace it too.

You need to go back to 1991 to find the first middle finger on tv in a professional wrestling broadcast however, and the finger belonged to a rather surprising source. Always something of a journeyman and nothing more, Jacques Rougeau will probably be best remembered eventually as being the man who trained Kevin Owens.

Well, he is also the man who first flipped the bird on pro wrestling TV. It did so as he was being thrown into a New York jail, as per the stipulation of his match with The Big Boss Man at SummerSlam 1991.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.