10 Bizarre Wrestling Facts We Just Accept
9. Trying To Kill Your Opponent Is Sound Strategy
While we're on the subject of conflict, let's tope suicida into another alarming way wrestling depicts interpersonal drama that we take for granted.
While a certain level of competition in sports is assumed, football, basketball, et al present matches within a strict code of rules. Like in any healthy relationship, there are boundaries nobody dares cross without incurring a severe penalty. Yet in wrestling, all bets are off. You do you, pal.
Once a long-standing feud reaches boiling point, wrestling promotions love thrusting their talent into gimmick matches marked by deadly weapons and equally dangerous victory conditions. Bury your opponent alive or set them on fire? Why settle for anything less when they ruined your birthday cake? It's not like they didn't have it coming.
A blow-off match is one thing, but even the most bog-standard WWE contest "set for one fall" routinely ends in someone being bludgeoned with a chair or championship belt. And when it furthers the story, we just accept it. The offending superstar is such a great heel, we say. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Or something.
Yet in any sport worth its salt, that kind of violence is liable to get someone suspended for life, not gainfully employed 4 life, nWo-style. Too sweet, are we right?