10 Times Wrestlers Secretly LIED To The Locker Room
Truthless aggression from Triple H, Hulk Hogan and...AJ Styles?!
There may be no emotion more complexly balanced in pro wrestling than trust.
The employment of it essential to every single match on every single card. Every contest is a submission of body and mind to somebody else based only on complete faith that they will take care not to hurt you when they're doing just that.
As an outsider, talk of "respect" from certain old-timers can sometimes scan as them not takin' too kindly to all the younger wrestlers ruinin' the goddamn business brother, but it's mostly wrapped up in their warped notions of brotherhood, trust and the incredible emotional undertaking required to serve yourself up to the hands of another. At least, it's nicer to think that rather than that they're all just crusty oddballs who want guns and knives back in the changing room and enough heat to burn the territory to the ground.
It's big, ultimately. Really, really big. Thus, they breaking of it - from promoter to wrestler, wrestler to wrestler or anybody else part of the inner circle - means more than just a lie between colleagues about an email that wasn't sent at 4:59pm the prior Friday. Well, unless you're supposed to be dropping your team leader with a high angle german at the Monday catch-up meeting...
10. The Radicalz Ghost Shane Douglas
Shane Douglas has at least made peace enough with what happened to him in late-1999/early-2000 enough to share the anecdotes in shoot interviews and the like, but it can't have felt great to be 'The Franchise' when actual wrestlers embodying the term were making the jump to wrestling's new promised land.
Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturday successfully got out of their WCW deals as part of a coordinated move to the thriving opposition, but the camp had initially been much bigger. Billy Kidman, Konnan and Shane Douglas were all good to go until the former pair were talked down and only five remained.
It was at this point, Douglas recalled, that things got weird. Either WWE made it clear he was of no interest or the group had simply done all their business without him, but the former ECW icon was no longer in the picture and, within days of not being able to get hold of his buddies, he was watching them, debut on Monday Night Raw.