3. Kevin Sullivan's Wife Leaves Him For Chris Benoit
While the feud between Edge and Matt Hardy was a shoot that became a limp worked angle, a similar incident between WCW's Kevin Sullivan and Chris Benoit began as a fictional storyline, but quickly spilled over into real life. The previously mentioned Kevin Sullivan booked an angle where his real-life (and onscreen) wife, Nancy "Woman" Sullivan, was found to be sleeping with Benoit. The old-school Sullivan made sure that the storyline remained believable between shows. Benoit and Nancy travelled together and made ostentatious public appearances, fuelling theories that the whole thing was actually a shoot. However, the whole thing backfired on Sullivan in a big way when Nancy and Chris actually did fall in love, ruining his marriage in the process. Every wrestling fan knows the eventual, tragic fate of Nancy in 2007, but that incident aside, the whole angle was a strange example of a worked-shoot becoming all too real. To Sullivan's credit, he continued to wrestle Benoit in a thoroughly professional manner, demonstrating almost unbelievable restraint given the circumstances surrounding their rivalry.
