10 Times Wrestlers Were Broken In The Hard Way
4. Matt Cappotelli
Bob Holly wanted to prove that Matt Cappotelli was indeed Tough Enough on the third season of the eponymous reality TV show.
Cappotelli and his cast mates were in the midst of an exhibition match alongside their trainers and colleagues on the 12th episode. The trainees enthusiastically urged their friends on against the pros in a gesture of support. Wrestling is a brotherhood, and all that. Guest trainer Bob Holly interpreted this as a spot of goofing off, and elected to go apesh*t on Cappotelli. He brutally smacked him three times across the neck, bust his lip, and blackened his eye. This was quite the story at the time; fans were shocked at this glimpse of an anachronistic practise made an onscreen reality.
The grim irony is that, if this wasn't already a worthless exercise post-1989, it was all for nought, anyway: Cappotelli, an in-ring natural, was never really able to use this experience to inform his career. Brain cancer robbed him of it in a deeply sad story with, by all accounts, a completely undeserved protagonist.
"I'm being rough for a reason. Not because I wanna be," protested Holly, but he probably did enjoy it. He was Bob Holly.
Ironically, Bill DeMott played the avuncular figure to Cappotelli at the episode's climax when, in reality, he probably bought Holly a beer, over which the two business-protectin' vets reminisced about all those times they headlined MSG.