30 Surprising WWE Facts You Probably Didn't Know

Most of you reading this will remember when the WWE stood for something. 

No, that’s not a pointed comment on how far they’ve moved from their professional wrestling roots: WWE literally used to stand for World Wrestling Entertainment, at least until April 7th 2011, when they announced that they would be rebranding yet again to just ‘WWE’.

Many of you will remember the rebranding exercise before that, when the WWF lost the tug of war over those initials to the panda, and changed the name of the company from the World Wrestling Federation. You’re those fans of the Attitude Era that the company keeps trying to court by hiring middled-aged men to waddle down to the ring at WrestleMania and emasculate talented contemporary stars.

Far fewer of you will recall the time before that: when the name changed from the World Wide Wrestling Federation, and the man most of the boys knew as Vinnie or Junior took over his father’s wrestling promotion with dreams of world domination clutched close to his trailer trash heart.

If all of that’s you, then congratulations: that’s a whole lot of wrestling trivia, minutiae, miscellanea, trifles and common or garden bullsh*t that we’re all privy to, as longtime fans and reluctant sucklers at the McTeat.

So here! Thirty little known facts about the WWE that you might - or might not - be aware of. 

Let’s see how big your grapefruits are.

For years, even though he’s been retired for six of them, Shawn Michaels has been known as Mr. WrestleMania. It’s a name given to him by the WWE in testament to the fact that he regularly stole the show at the biggest, baddest show of them all

But then that’s not really the point, is it? Given that, within the context of its own storylines, the WWE is a legitimate fighting organisation on the same level at the UFC, within those storylines it shouldn’t matter how phenomenally entertaining the Heartbreak Kid could be at WrestleMania.

What matters is whether he won or not… and ‘Mr. WrestleMania’ made a habit of losing at the event he was nicknamed after.

Out of seventeen matches on the grandest stage of them all, Michaels only won six. That’s eleven matches he’s lost in front of the WWF/E’s biggest crowd: two thirds of the time, he’s come out to great fanfare, only to stare at the lights for someone the company felt was more important on that given day.

I hereby propose renaming the Second Greatest Wrestler Of All Time to ‘Mr. Suckfest’. Those can be the two words he has for you from now on.