10 Times Wrestlers Pulled Back The Curtain

Magicians revealing their own tricks, or distracting you into falling for new ones?

The Rock
WWE

There are no rules when it comes to establishing what does or doesn't still remain sacred in pro wrestling anymore.

We are generations and generations (and generations and generations) removed not just from those fans that think everything to be 100% real, but even for the fans that know it isn't but need to believe 100% of the time that it is.

As usual, the medium's a happy one somewhere in the middle. Yes, fundamentally wrestling is a fatally flawed game if the wrestlers don't accept certain ludicrous terms of their lives and turn up for work each week with them in mind, but that's not to say the modern shows call for a return to the days of the 1980s and 1990s and pitfalls that came with each of them.

Those exposed the industry in a very different way. These examples simply had fun with the form, or in the case of one documentary, charted the detailed and complex pitfalls of even wanting to perform all these tricks in the first place.

For once so long a barrier to their dark arts, the curtain has been beneficial to folk in more recent times....

10. Roman Reigns

The Rock
WWE

In 2018, WWE thought they'd finally figured out the Roman Reigns problem once and for all, and deemed it worthwhile to try and use the perceived internal favouritism towards Brock Lesnar as a unique way of finally getting 'The Big Dog' over with the audience. All theoretically ideal with a WrestleMania showdown on the horizon between the two.

The play failed spectacularly.

Reigns accusing McMahon of anything remotely like bias was too ludicrous a line for even WWE's purest heart fans. The paying punters had witnessed Roman's rise for years, and had seen it survive the scorn of multiple rejections along the way. Only with the boss' stroke could something like that have occurred, no matter how intense the pair's Gorilla Position stand-off was supposed to be.

This undercooked angle contributed to the toxic atmosphere that greeted the match a few weeks later. People so flatly refused to believe that the former Shield man was some kind of exiled pariah that they booed the entire match out of the building of sheer spite.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett