10 Insane Lengths Wrestlers Went To Get Revenge For Real

Spite is the single biggest driver of motivation amongst human beings.

Love, hatred, ambition: these things do drive us all forward, yes, but spite is more powerful than you'd like to believe. Nobody likes to be told that they can't do something. Nobody likes to think they're worse than somebody else.

How many stories have you heard, as a wrestling fan, of a wrestler developing a boundless determination to succeed purely because they were once told that they wouldn't?

Very recently, upon lifting the TNT title for a second time, AEW's Darby Allin cut an impassioned promo when Dynamite went off the air in which he revealed that, as a wrestler tiny even by the standards of an industry that was no longer size-obsessed when he entered it, he would still fail dismally. From that moment, he was driven to succeed and indeed, he succeeded to a level far beyond those who acted as his gatekeepers in the pacific northwest indie circuit. The Young Bucks were also told they couldn't succeed, but did so - out of spite.

Ironically, the man with whom they'll forever be linked operated in much the same way...

The best story WWE told in 2009 did not make it to television.

In fact, the dumbest, broadest character on TV proved himself better than an entire room of hack writers and the decaying tyrant to whom they bowed by crafting a stunning wrestling adaption of an Aesop fable.

As the story goes, told by Chris Jericho in his 2013 book 'The Best In The World...At What I Have No Idea', Cody Rhodes once made a derisory remark to Santino Marella about his shape. Cody, a gregarious fellow who delights in owning a room, has form in alienating certain people with his cruelly funny, candid sense of humour. He almost turned AEW heel before Double Ot Nothing 2019 when sideways burying Bayley.

Marella was seething, and challenged Cody to a bodybuilding completion at the WrestleMania 25 afterparty. Cody laughed it off, and didn't take it seriously. The "boys" did, even mocking up posters in the style of the 'Mania V VHS cover, and in the background, Marella told a better long-term story than WWE managed at the time.

He shed significant weight and even hired a professional to train him in flexing the best poses. He annihilated Cody on the night; Triple H, a bodybuilding aficionado, called out the poses that Marella had learned. Lathered in baby oil, he was early Sid Vicious, and Cody was whichever poor prick was stood in front of him.

This version of the tortoise and the hare was better than the Guest Host era, and that is not facetious whatsoever.