10 Times Wrestling Matches Got Weapons Wrong

Gimmicking the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.

Triple H Randy Orton
WWE

It really isn't difficult, or at least it shouldn't be, for a company that very condescendingly prides itself on its ability to tell stories.

"We make movies," once said a lip-smacking Vince McMahon, and he was right, in the end.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) barely even qualifies as a film. It is so laughably amateurish in every single criteria that it can't be a film, because the sole qualification is that somebody filmed it, but is canonised as one precisely because it is so worthless. It is one of few times that punching down is halfway acceptable; the director is a dreamer with no talent, but the schadenfreude is so powerful that it transcends morality.

Anyway, there's a scene in which the crazed birds attack the leads by a car, but the birds, because this is no-budget, are screensavers. The director can't show the birds because he has no money, and he lacks the connection to reality to determine how awful it looks.

In Swamp Fight (2020, Dir. Jeremy Borash), they show images of threatening alligators in post. They don't show convincing CGI alligators because it's a load of cheap, lazy sh*t literally worse than Birdemic, because they have no excuse.

Gauge the tone. That's it. That's all you need to do.

Tables are good because the noise is very satisfying, as is the crumpled human heap. A good chair shot sounds disgusting. Brass knuckles are meant to go undetected. Don't be dumb.

Don't be really, really dumb.

10. GIANT MALLET - Seth Rollins Vs. The Fiend, WWE Hell In A Cell 2019

Triple H Randy Orton
WWE Network

Bray Wyatt makes up this bullsh*t as he goes along, with no grand narrative plan, and yet it is received in some circles as a "mythology".

Most recently, at Extreme Rules, he performed a trick on Braun Strowman. He projected the image of Alexa Bliss, the object of his affections, into his mind's eye to get him into a swamp or some sh*t. This coaxed the theorists out there to suggest that Sister Abigail is the manifestation of one's desires. This isn't untrue, strictly - you are all perverts who want to see Liv Morgan wearing a gothic corset with her hair dyed black - but it's rather undermined when Bray Wyatt, ahead of TLC '17, revealed that he was Sister Abigail...all along!

So, if Sister Abigail is the manifestation of one's desires, Bray Wyatt desires Bray Wyatt with a fake lisp.

At Hell In A Cell '19, proving definitely that no real thought goes behind anything he does, Wyatt used a giant mallet in his infamous disaster of a main event with Seth Rollins. A comedy prop presumably intended to create an unsettling, jarring effect in a horror movie context, he was allowed to use it by the referee...

...who called the match off when Seth Rollins attempted to use a smaller hammer.

In a match with no disqualifications.

"The significance of the mallet relates to Bray's childhood; in this essay..."

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!