10 Devastating Injuries That Made Wrestlers WORSE
1. Samoa Joe
People forget how awesome Samoa Joe once was, and awesome is the word.
This is a man who performed like such a killer and radiated such lethal, badass energy that he convincingly went eye-to-eye with Kenta f*cking Kobashi in a classic war legendary for its quality, significance, and sheer cacophony.
He was an unreal athlete in a new athlete's world, too, handing him the edge to stand arms-folded above his trailblazing 2000s indie peers. He was capable of producing legit Holy Sh*t reactions by vaulting to the outside and flattening the competition like a motherf*cking avalanche of a man. Samoa Joe ruled.
That was before he took an inexplicable bump in a match against Sting at TNA Bound For Glory 2008. As the action sprawled to the stands, he leaped into a dropkick, barely connected, and landed coccyx-first on the unforgiving edge of a concrete step. He was never the same.
He was good enough to adjust - after a terrible spell of booking which almost ruined him in parallel - and entered some very respectable and even great performances in NXT.
But his physical limitations and the limitations of the in-house WWE style never yielded the big stage classics of which he was once so capable.