10 Wrestlers Who Broke Kayfabe In Unusual Ways

5. Koji Kitao Triggers An Earthquake

Becky Lynch
WWE

Koji Kitao's place in North American wrestling lore can mostly be boiled down to two nights in early 1991, but his abbreviated tenure was far from without incident.

After working a listless WrestleMania VII tag team match against Demolition to get over WWE's relationship with Super World of Sports in Japan, Kitao caused a far bigger stir with Earthquake just a few days later.

Working an inter-promotional match in Kobe, Kitao bizarrely elected to just stop selling for the WWE star. This quickly got out of hand and degenerated into an ugly real life scuffle that the referee and various other scattered officials were too small to separate.

Koji eventually swiped at the ref himself, forcing a disqualification and a way out of this terrible mess, but not before getting on the microphone and declaring wrestling as fake as a way to explain away his strange behaviour. He was predictably let go from SWS shortly afterwards.

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Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett