The BEST Wrestling Moment Every Year (1989 - 2026)

36. 1991 | Cobra Bite

This was hard. 

In many ways, Randy Savage’s tearful reunion with Miss Elizabeth at WrestleMania 7 wasn’t just an iconic pro wrestling moment: it was a quintessential moment, perhaps the quintessential moment, that defined the WWF’s identity, and its objective to transcend pro wrestling through the tone and scope of its storytelling. Years in the making, histrionic in its emotion, the incredible scene distilled and perfected the episodic soap opera that differentiated the WWF from a mere “night at the matches”. In contrast, the Randy Savage and Jake Roberts cobra bite was a scary heavy heat angle, the tone and terror of which is what every tawdry wrasslin’ promoter hoped to conjure. 

It wasn’t just a despicable heat angle - on, of all shows, WWF Superstars - it was more elevated than that. The juxtaposition of the vivid, polished WWF backdrop and this heinous act added to the wrongness of the scene. Things like this weren’t meant to happen here. 

With the use of a de-venomised snake, it was an only-in-WWE special effect, but nobody watching at the time knew that - and if they’d deduced it, it still wouldn’t have mattered. The cobra is too frightening a creature - you can watch the footage back now, and still feel like it could somehow thrust its darting, erratic head through the screen - and a paranoid Savage sold the attack like one of his many invented enemies had switched it for the real thing. That little monster would not let go, either. An already wrong scene felt like it was reaching a genuinely bleak, even fatal conclusion to the young (and subsequently traumatised) fan.

The greatest heels take it too far. This was such a transgression that it’s a wonder every parent or guardian the world over didn’t ban the World Wrestling Federation in their household.