10 Wrestlers That Can't Exist In Real Life
For when the mask can't slip.
Don’t take the title of this list as a pre-requisite skill for all pro wrestlers.
The game is rooted in suspension of disbelief, after all. It matters not what a wrestler does out of the ring if audiences can buy in to what they get up to at their place of work. The very idea that a 20x20 roped bit of canvas in front of television cameras might be the perfect place to settle personal disputes requires the switching off of any cynicism no matter the match or wrestler.
If a viewer can manage that - as they do when watching every film or television show ever made - then the story can finally be told. And yet, the overlap to the other side of the screen rarely gets easier. For every John Cena or Miz parroting everything perfectly, the lines are often still awkwardly blurred.
The recent passing of television icon Regis Philbin brought with it a reminder of all the times he made wrestlers and the profession look fantastic, but even he might have struggled with some of the ones below. You can take any of them out of pro wrestling, but you'll struggle to ever take the pro wrestling out of them...
10. Hulk Hogan
It goes without saying that Hulk Hogan could - at his peak - talk shop outside of the industry without compromising his character.
An infamous inadvertent incident with Richard Belzer aide, 'The Hulkster' was convivial and coherent despite his size and typically overblown character. If anything, his ability to shine in that particular spotlight made clear just how tight Vince McMahon's grasp on North America's pulse really was.
Hogan was so bloody aspirational that Regan-era families and young yuppies alike that he fit into society almost exactly as he was. If only it were that easy as wrestling began to pass him by.
The man trained to expertly deceive for all of his career had suddenly lost sight of the difference between shoot and work, even if we were still the "jabronie marks without a life". Either because he couldn't or simply wouldn't embrace the real world completely, Hogan's life in the industry forever confused the truth. Little fibs in passing became tap-touching whoppers in autobiographies and interviews, and nothing that emerged from underneath that fu manchu ever sounded quite so legitimate again.