4. Mick Foley Loses An Ear
Everyone knows that Mick Foley has a high threshold of pain, whether he's wrestling as Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love, or under his real name. Having your head smack on the ground, or running, knee-first, into ring steps is one thing. Hell, landing on barbed wire or thumbtacks is one thing. Having one of your body parts completely ripped from your skull, though? That's an entirely different thing altogether. No human being is supposed to get through that without turning into a blubbering pile of screaming, crying mess. In a match with Vader in Germany, Foley (as Cactus Jack) went to perform a "hangman", where he would have his head tied up between the top and middle ropes as he dangled precariously on the outside of the ring. Unfortunately for Mick, he was unaware that WCW officials had tightened the ring ropes (in actuality, they were rubber-encased elevator cables, which have far less "give" than the average set of wrestling ring ropes) before his match, after complaints from other wrestlers that the ropes were too loose. This left him in a situation where the blood wasn't flowing to his brain properly, and he was struggling to free himself from the ropes. When he finally did slip through, two-thirds of his ear was ripped off, and that gave us the lovable, deformed man we all know today. It did nothing but add to the mystique that is Mick Foley's life and career, almost as if it was destined to happen. Try as you might, you really couldn't picture it happening to just about any other wrestler in the 90's.