10 Terrifying Wrestling Moments That Still Scare Adults
8. Randy Savage Gets Bitten By Cobra
A seminal moment that traumatised the youth watching, everything about the angle was so perfect that it retains a sort of timeless power, all these years later. Some men are terrifying, and contrary to the intro, some retain the power to terrify in the pro wrestling arena - provided, ironically, that they aren't dressed for that purpose. Minoru Suzuki's facials, as an honourable mention, work as well as his stiff brutality to evoke that feeling.
None can inspire the same primal fear of a wild animal disturbing the order of civilisation.
In a superb escalation, Jake Roberts' heel character of the early '90s introduced here a cobra instead of the python. The old snake was a more symbolic threat. This cobra was something else; attacking in terrifying, random patterns its human prey was unable to register, that prey was a legitimately terrified Randy Savage who, while a master of conveying anguish, didn't much need to work. The cobra is uniquely terrifying because it is deadly, but its darting lunges are so fast that it feels, beyond the lens, capable of jumping back through it. And he he bit the man, too, in what was an expert work.
One of the all-time great heat angles, this continues to lunge through the numb husk the older wrestling fan develops to inspire fear three decades later.