10 Dark Secrets About WWE Legends
Nostalgia is an unreliable narrator: featuring Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Doink...
Fed up of modern wrestling?
Why not indulge in the Past, where everything was better?
Boot up the Network and zone out in a state of wistful, nostalgic bliss. You don't even have to really pay attention, not that the matches of your millennial past are particularly intricate or even long half the time. You can just sit there, sprawled, and luxuriate in a glow of a vibe.
The red, white and azure blue aesthetic and its visual cue that people were once halfway united in the States, once upon a time. The constant roar of a crowd going nuts for absolutely everything, even - especially! - the old ten punches on top of the turnbuckle spot. The eye-catching, brightly coloured gear. The tassels. The gowns. The robes. The sheen of sweat coating preposterously big, tanned, cartoon muscles. The sheer vibrancy of the way the crowd is lit. The gorgeous baritone of Mene Gene Okerlund, the outrageous parody macho energy of his interview subjects. The synthesisers, the guitars. The very dated flailing selling that nonetheless captures the crowd right in their soul.
It's an escape from the horrors of the world - just try not to recall the fact that your childhood heroes, a shocking number of them, weren't exactly heroic...
10. The Dynamite Kid: Shoot Trash
The Dynamite Kid was as disgusting in real life as he was incredible in the ring - and he was incredible in the ring.
Watch this short GIF of Dynamite "nailing" Bret Hart with two knee drops. The one from the second turnbuckle looks horrific. Show that to anybody who doesn't know better, and lie, telling them that Hart's face exploded and required reconstructive surgery in the aftermath, and they'd believe you. In reality, Hart was fine. He didn't feel a thing; he just sold it brilliantly, and the Kid set new standards of accuracy that may never have been surpassed.
What else looks that deadly in 2023? Kenny Omega's V-Trigger and Will Ospreay's Hidden Blade are the only honourable mentions.
Kid was a sociopath, the stories surrounding whom are legion. He relentless bullied Jacques Rougeau, and for once, karma came for him. Jacques did explode Kid's face with a roll of quarters sucker punch.
In his New Japan days, he was twice arrested for assaulting teenage fans. In his book 'Ring of Hell', Matthew Randazzo V revealed that, to prove his toughness to the far larger "boys" in the Stampede territory, the Kid would beat up vagrants, knock out strangers in bars, and take liberties with his opponents in the ring - even going as far as to kick them flush in the head when they were in the process of blading themselves.
Tom Billington himself admitted that, as part of a terror campaign against his wife Michelle, he'd threaten her with murder by placing a shotgun under her chin when she threatened to finally leave a toxic and abusive relationship.