9 Wrestlers Who Came Back From The Dead
With funeral plot holes like these, it's no wonder WWE needs a Continuity Editor.
In the second act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the eponymous Roman general regails his wife Calpurnia with the following aphorism:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."
It's a lovely sentiment - and, admittedly, entirely metaphorical - but when it comes to the world of professional wrestling, surely the closest modern day approximation of The Bard's ribaldric Globe, it's bang wrong.
Like any piece of fiction, death adds drama, and the squared circle has been no exception. The only problem is, wrestling is supposed to be a sport with soap opera tendencies, and not the other way around. Which means, for one reason or another, the valiant few that have fallen in the line of scripted duty have more often than not turned up fresh as daisies rather than pushing them up within weeks.
Sometimes, in the space of ten minutes.
The reasons are rarely given. You'd expect supernatural b*llocks to be the most common explanation for wrestler resuscitation, but forgetful or simply unfussed writers is the real answer to eternal life.
With funeral plot holes like these, it's no wonder WWE needs a Continuity Editor.
9. The Giant
In the fall of 1995, just under a year before he dodged litter during his industry-shaking heel turn at Bash at the Beach, Hulk Hogan was already low-key experimenting with a pivot to the dark side. At October's Halloween Havoc, the Hulkster emerged for his championship clash in a cool all black ensemble, 'tache ludicrously absent, and with evil under his belt. After all, he'd killed a man earlier in the night.
His opponent, no less. As a motoring matinee to their main event clash, Hogan and the Dungeon of Doom's latest denizen, The Giant, ridiculously commandeered monster trucks as they took turns slowly ramming one another on the roof of Detroit's Cobo Hall. Once the fannying about had concluded, the drivers got into an unsporting scrap, which ended with The Giant tragically falling off the roof to his death.
The pathos is priceless, as a contrite Hogan (although happy to maim his opponent with a 10,000 lb vehicle) shows visible distress watching his paycheque crash into the Detroit River. He needn't have worried; whilst apologising to fans for the "terrible accident", the future Big Show walked out absolutely right as rain. He wasn't even wet! Now that's how you style out death.