15 Biggest BURIALS Wrestlers Never Recovered From
The Champ Is Here! Don't cross him (or anybody else that high up the card...)
By accident or by design, the pro wrestling burial is among the most brutal acts that can happen in a business built on total trust in your colleagues.
It can happen on screen or off, and both are bad. Imagine it getting around backstage that you suck, or that you're hard to work with, or that you're only in the spot because of [insert reason you deem grossly unfair] or a combination of all of the above. And then that news getting back to you, and the extremely likely scenario that you then have to go out in front of a paying public and perform with it swirling around your head. All, very possibly with the people who started it or shared it.
Then there's the ones that happen out-front. An ultimate contradiction of the various industry core tenets around trust. Trusting somebody else with your body is paramount, but in some respects its the bare minimum. You know what else helps your body? Food and secure housing, and both of those can get taken away in an instant if you're buried live on television and have no feasible way of digging yourself out of the hole your opponent, colleague or best friend (!) has just put you in.
More's the pity for the poor victim; castigation is sometimes accidentally captivating. Such as when it happened to...
15. Baron Corbin (By John Cena)
Baron Corbin had only been in the industry five years when he was put face to face with John Cena in the summer of 2017, so there was something reasonable - rationale, even - about 'The Champ's apparent backstage confirmation that the 'Lone Wolf' didn't have "it" after their initial interactions. The trick of the work is to obscure that of course, and Cena didn't seem particularly fussed about that part of his job during their feud.
Over the course of a few weeks, Corbin embarrassingly lost his Money In The Bank briefcase thanks to an over-zealous cash-in attempt on paper Champion Jinder Mahal just days before he was set to go toe-to-toe with Cena at SummerSlam in the biggest match in his career. This was less-than-ideal booking, but WWE constantly undermined heels in their feuds with 'Big Match John', and as long as the Premium Live Event played host to some attempt from Corbin to extract angry revenge, it didn't all need to be a big dead loss for the former NXT star.
Cena wins, lol.
The veteran spent ages messing around with JBL's cowboy hat, led Corbin around like Bugs Bunny would Elmer Fudd, dragged a "where's your briefcase" chant kicking and screaming from an indifferent crowd and wrapped up what ultimately scanned as a squash in less time than all-but one contest on the 13-match card. Golden ticket in hand, Baron looked like he was just getting started, Two weeks with Cena and he was already finished.