8 Wrestlers Who Went Nuts Overseas
International Incidents.
What goes on tour, stays on tour. Or it would, if wrestling wasn't one of the worst industries for keeping secrets.
"Telegram, telephone, tell a wrestler" was the old adage back when people still actually used telegrams and spoke on telephones, but Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter is more popular and profitable than ever before because wrestlers can still be relied upon to spill the beans if the stories are there to be shared.
Several generations of performers probably thank their favoured deities for the relative recency of social media as a lifestyle tool. Kevin Nash famously noted that by the late-1990s, "rockstars partied like wrestlers" such was the growth of the scene and the chaos that often exploded out of it.
An overseas trip, even in 2018, literally supplants the wrestlers on brave new islands rife for isolated incidents. Those same partiers - often without the pressures of domestic travel, accommodation or finances to arrange - find increasingly hedonistic new ways to toast their bizarre and brilliant lifestyle choice.
No hotel bar was safe, no airplane was air-bound enough. Even international prisons couldn't contain one particular Rocky Mountains monster. Well, it could actually, for a brief period at least...
8. Vader Keeps Kayfabe
A unsettling kayfabe protectorate several years after the mask had already formally slipped, Vader lived the gimmick one last time when he felt the integrity of his industry challenged.
After being served a annoyingly typical question about the legitimacy of pro wrestling (with the other dreaded 'f' word uttered by the host Bassam Al Othman) midway through a fluffy promotional interview on 'Good Morning Kuwait', Vader snapped as if the interviewer was 1992 Sting himself. "Does that f*cking feel fake" yelled Vader, bulldozing over a coffee table to reach out and grab the terrified presenter by the throat.
Then-WWE Champion The Undertaker had already palmed the question off with a certain level of diplomacy, but Vader wanted the time for his own violent response. It was a costly call.
The incident resulted in 'The Mastadon' being briefly jailed in the country before being released and forced into paying a laughably small $164 fine. The whole scene was unnecessarily ugly, and permanently derailed any further upward momentum Vader had earned as a topliner. The disdain in Vince McMahon's voice as he reported the incident on Monday Night Raw during his absence was palpable.