10 Moments That Literally Stopped WWE Wrestling Matches

9. Rope Break Ruin For The Rockers

John Cena ECW One Night Stand 2006
WWE.com

The Hart Foundation. The Rockers. Saturday Night's Main Event. The WWF Tag Team Championships on the line.

Right there, we have all the ingredients for an absolute all-time classic contest.

While Bret Hart, Jim Neidhart, Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels did deliver the goods in the early goings of the match, this tag bout famously took a wayward turn when the top rope broke after the Anvil charged into a turnbuckle.

Upon watching the match back, you can clearly see that all four competitors are irked by this mishap, with Hart and Michaels spending a good few minutes in a front face lock while they assess the situation and plan how to best cope with this issue.

The match doesn't actually stop when the rope break happened; it stops after the first pinfall of this two-out-of-three falls bout.

While some such matches may have a brief ten seconds or so break between falls, this contest stops dead for a good couple of minutes while the top rope is fixed. And all the while, you can see the frustration building in the faces of all four men who had seen their plans for a classic scuppered by something totally out of their control.

Of course, this match - which saw The Rockers crowned the new WWF Tag Team Champs - never made it to air.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.