8 Biggest Chop Masters In Wrestling History

Despite being considered ‘scripted violence’, professional wrestlers can and do hurt each other for real. No matter how tough you might think you are, the sheer force of being thrown to a hard canvas will always cause pain. Wrestlers have, over time, found ways to mitigate the pain they cause each other when they ‘strike each other’. 

After all, it's said that ‘you can pull a punch, but you can’t fake a chop’.

It’s not hard to see why. While a wrestling punch can be faked by using open fists, a chop, which is more or less a fancy way of slapping your opponent’s body with either the back or the palm of your hand, cannot be faked. In fact, the whole point of a chop is to connect with your opponent’s body as hard as possible, in order to make as much noise from the impact as you can.

During a match, chops can provide the audience with comic relief as they watch a larger wrestler hush the crowd before slapping their chests, to sadistically hilarious effect. At the same time, chops can also be used to demonstrate strength and toughness, as one wrestler’s ability to dish out punishment is compared to another’s ability to withstand it.

Many wrestlers have become legendary for their chopping abilities. These are the eight wrestlers who, when it came to chopping, got the biggest crowd reactions and made more chests welt and change colour from the impact of their strikes.

Big Show's chops are a little bit different from those of other individuals on this list. Instead of executing a backhand chop, Show does an overhead chop that looks a bit more like a slap than it does a chop. But the small differences in technique don't really matter in the grand scheme of things; when Big Show's frying pan-sized hands make contact with your skin, it's going to leave a nasty mark and it's going to hurt like hell.

Big Show has taken advantage of this and has incorporated the corner chop into his regular repertoire. Whether he's working as a face or as a heel, Show has a tendency to force his opponent into a corner, hush the crowd, and chop his opponent in the chest as hard as possible. 

As you can see from the video above, the impact is so devastating that it leaves a noticeable hand print in Swagger's chest.

Former WWE referee Jim Korderas once told a story where he was playing a drunken game with some WWE superstars, and he found himself on the receiving end of a Big Show chop. As Korderas was removing his shirt, Show told him something along the lines of 'you better move that crucifix, or it's going to be permanently implanted in your chest'.

Show's chops are truly terrifying, to be sure.