7 Times Wrestlers Lost Real-Life Fights With Non-Wrestlers
The Marine: starring Shawn Michaels.
What's the toughest thing in the known universe? Geologists with their science reckon it's diamonds. Purveyors of pithy idioms contest it's old boots. Believe the back pages, and you'd think it's managing the England football team, despite it requiring at best, three week's worth of work and carries zero expectations.
In actual fact, it's none of these things. It's obviously wrestlers.
We all know the tales. Hardy veterans making grown men squeal beneath a single thumb at the first mention of the word "fake". Entire police squadrons cowering in fear behind riot gear at the sight of a shirtless Haku. Bruised bodies, broken bones, and bitten beaks; these are the brutal breadcrumbs of an industry perpetually determined to prove that hey, it is all real, just let me show you how...
For the longest time, protecting the business behind a closed fist was paramount, and as a result, stories of those who did the job for simple civvies are not exactly easy to find. It hardly matters these days, but once over, if a wrestler tasted the stale beer on the barroom tiles, they'd be ordered back in with reinforcements to settle the score. Beating up a wrestler was one thing - living to tell the tale entirely another.
But some of these scoops managed to escape the privacy of the pub, swiftly taking a pool cue to the firm head of kayfabe.
7. Lou Thesz Goes Down To Amateur
In the early 20th century, the legendary Lou Thesz arrived on planet Earth as a grizzled, forty-something veteran, all sinuous brawn and an insuperably hard bastard to boot. Thesz went on to break records as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, keeping his vice-like grip on the sport's most prestigious prize for a colossal 3749 days.
The Michigan could back up his professional exploits with an impressive amateur background, but sometimes, his confidence got the better of him. Whilst being followed by a local TV station during a tour of Buffalo, NY, the local university's freestyle wrestling team were invited to try their hardest against the canescent master. The lightweights were, as expected, peremptorily dispatched.
Ego burgeoning, Thesz challenged the team's heavyweight. The rolling cameras caught the perennial champ thrown almost immediately to the floor, as his manager Ed 'Strangler' Lewis quickly dived in to block the embarrassment being caught on film. Thesz was left with no option but to grab his opponent's wrist and wrench it so hard that it nearly snapped.
The foul move cased a considerable kerfuffle, and real fisticuffs weren't far off. Thankfully, things settled down, and the heavyweight in question was ultimately inspired by the experience to become a pro himself. Don Curtis eventually blossomed into a decorated wrestler - and a close personal friend of Thesz.