10 Times Wrestling And Animals Didn't Mix
3. Bruno Sammartino Vs. An Orangutan
What's the weirdest thing you've ever done at a carnival? Actually don't answer that - we'll get in trouble.
Instead, let's talk about the time the longest-reigning WWE Champion of all time fought an orangutan at a travelling fair.
Sammartino was just getting into wrestling in the mid-'50s when the carnival rolled into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The young Italian was working as a carpenter at the time and saw the chance to win $25 for spending five minutes in a cage with an orangutan.
Seeing how he was only making $2 an hour, Bruno leapt at the chance.
According to the future Hall of Famer, he lasted fifteen minutes with the ape, but he got the worst of the fight. In his own words, "the monkey won".
Apparently, the orangutan wasn't trained to perform (how you actually train an ape to wrestle is unclear, but we'll skip over that), so the whole experience was extremely painful for Bruno and presumably for the poor primate that had been forced into this bizarre stunt.
Thankfully, Sammartino didn't have to wrestle animals for much longer in his career, as he was WWE Champion less than a decade after the orangutan incident.