10 More Wrestling Facts You Probably Didn't Know
5. The Million Dollar Man Refused To Go Home
When a card runs long, it’s usually the less important matches higher up that suffer. When The Undertaker and CM Punk’s match began to run long at WrestleMania XXIX, Vince McMahon cut the mixed tag match featuring the Bella Twins and Team Rhodes Scholars vs Tons O’ Funk and the Funkadactyls while all eight performers were warming up at the gorilla position.
Well, twenty-one years earlier, Ted DiBiase, the Million Dollar Man, had found himself in the same predicament when he and his tag team partner I.R.S. were booked to face off against the Natural Disasters for the tag titles at WrestleMania VIII.
Fred 'Typhoon' Ottman told the story back in November 2012, in an interview with In Your House Wrestling Radio. As Earthquake and Typhoon made their entrance, they were informed that the show was running over, and that they would have to go home almost immediately. Reaching the ring, they quietly informed Money Inc. they needed to go straight to the finish, only to be firmly told by DiBiase that the match would proceed as laid out.
Maybe DiBiase was affronted at having a WrestleMania moment ruined. Maybe he realised that the planned finish - a countout loss to the babyfaces to allow the heels to retain their titles - wasn’t going to work in thirty seconds.
Whatever the case, McMahon was livid when they went back through the curtain ten minutes later...