10 Wrestling Matches That Accidentally Filmed Things You Weren't Meant To See

By Michael Sidgwick / March 6, 2022

Homogeneity is the death of pro wrestling.

This is why WWE is mostly bad and created its own competition. The promos are all identikit ha-ha bullsh*t that aim for comedy but instead inspire total, cringing despair. The booking is directionless and repetitive. The matches transcend homogeny. They are not similar. WWE runs the exact same matches every single week. The match quality is generally good-to-very-good, outside of a staggeringly incompetent RAW Women's division, but they rarely mean anything and the imposed pace at which they are worked is often just boring. Solid isn't enough.

AEW is not a perfect wrestling promotion. While mostly excellent, it can even veer into the realm of the infuriating. How can a company that has mapped Hangman Page's arc so elegantly book Vickie Guerrero in a match?

But one glance at Miro's potential slayers underscores how well this company books and the extent to which range is embraced: Jungle Boy, Eddie Kingston, Orange Cassidy, Sammy Guevara, Kazarian: all are excellent, credible and totally different babyfaces.

NJPW's production is however so good that it should be the norm. It should be homogenised. The static, patient camera allows you to feel the snap of every move, the arc of every flight. Every wrestling company on the planet should rip it off.

And that is because North American pro wrestling is broadly useless at production...

10. Painted Cardboard At AEW Blood & Guts

The discourse has thankfully eased.

What a sh*tty day that was to have picked wrestling as a hobby and created a Twitter account, Jesus f*cking Christ.

At AEW Blood & Guts, Chris Jericho took a tremendous, admirable risk to get the story over, and that story can be traced back to August 2020. Jericho, pondering whether or not to induct MJF into the Inner Circle, called his protege "soft". This act of sadistic violence proved otherwise, and it was arrived at through a continuation of the epic chess game on which the entire rivalry was premised.

None of this mattered or resonated because AEW's production team botched the shot.

You were not meant to see that that the "metal" covering the crash pad was in fact cardboard because AEW made what can technically be described as an "effort" to obscure it. It was a sh*tty effort, but an effort nonetheless. The entire landing area looked pathetic, and for a company otherwise pretty damn intelligent in booking its storylines, this was as thick as f*cking sh*t. Of course the impact was going to send the cardboard flying. A slight breeze sends cardboard flying.

Instead of the god's eye view, AEW filmed the impact in close-up, and Jericho almost cracked the back of his head open for nothing.