10 WWE Stars Loved For The Wrong Match
More Than This.
The grim irony of wrestling is that the gladiators who sacrifice their bodies for our entertainment often do so in vain. The schedule is unforgiving. These men and women grind their bones to dust and their ligaments to jelly for so long, and so often, that it must at times feel as pointless as it does painful.
Searching for any WWE performer in the Cagematch database makes for a sobering read. While we criticise Dolph Ziggler for having the audacity to feature in an upcoming pay-per-view match incongruous to his role in the storylines, his brutal schedule demands a four-match-per-week output with draining, intensive travel - from his own pocket - required to get him from California to Arizona. Sleep is a luxury, rest even more so. Wrestlers do it for the money and the adulation. That adulation is in short supply; there is always a better match, a more deserving performer. And, since the constant episodic nature of pro wrestling is long-form and therefore forgettable, we instead distil this often unseen body of work into "moments" - as if a career spanning multiple years and countless matches is defined by one shorthand frame of reference. It is, which is the shame of it.
This is a celebration of the art beyond the "moment"...
10. Mankind
Loved for: Mankind Vs. The Undertaker, Hell In A Cell Match, King Of The Ring 1998
This is the match synonymous with Mrs. Foley's Baby Boy. It is his most iconic, memorable, influential - and it harrowingly distills the essence of a performer who, lacking the physique to reach the top via the traditional route, opted to carve his own path. Betraying the very premise of the industry, Foley used real violence to get himself over. The achievement was subjectively dubious, objectively successful: Foley's leap remains both highlight fixture and impossible precedent.
Deserves as much, if not more credit for: Mankind Vs. Shawn Michaels, WWF Title Match, In Your House: Mind Games
Violent but not catastrophically so, this was a character masterclass in which Mankind unearthed the real Shawn Michaels - the heartless pr*ck within the smiling do-gooder facade - to craft a textured story of a good man compelled to do bad things. A genuine fight, Mankind and Michaels used the ringside apparatus in devilishly ingenious ways, creating a template for the multiple hardcore matches that would follow.
A deflating finish does not undermine its power, all these years later: this was seminal and inspiring stuff confirming that Foley was an even better worker than he was a stuntman.