10 Wrestling Moments That Made You Mark Out
Sometimes, you need to forget that wrestling is wrestling...
Straight up, I hate the term "marking out".
Where most of wrestling's unique vocabulary can be clever and nuanced, that particular expression feels like it gets thrown around for the most trivial of things. You've told your friends that you "marked out" when the pizza delivery guy arrived, or when they read your text out on the radio - none of this is correct.
After a discussion with my esteemed colleagues here at WhatCulture though, the great Benjamin Richardson offered what, I honestly think, is the best definition of the term possible; "I always think of "marking out" as being when wrestling actually works". The man is not a poet but, for me, in that moment, he might as well have been. Pro wrestling, at its best, is supposed to make us forget that it's pro wrestling. It's supposed to make us buy into it completely, to make marks out or every single one of us.
It manages this, rarely. Often, big wins, pleasing promos, shock returns and the other good stuff might get big pops out of us, but hardly ever do they make us entirely forget that what we're watching was written by a group of people specifically trying to elicit that exact response. Sometimes though, sometimes, they hit the sweet spot of surprise and joy so precisely, that you forget everything you think you know...
10. Chris Jericho Steals The WWE Championship
In what still goes down as one of the greatest Monday Night Raw moments ever (for me, anyway) the near untouchable Triple H lost the WWF Championship to fan-favourite/bothersome mid-carder Chris Jericho. This, simply, was beyond the realms of possibility.
It wasn't clean - WWE was at pains to protect Hunter even back then - and after clocking the champ with his own belt and benefitting from a fast count, referee Earl Hebner stripped him later in the night and reversed the decision. A whopping anti-climax but not one that has ever diluted the pure elation of the moment itself. Honestly, go back and watch this segment and try and imagine how much better wrestling would be today with a crowd as hot as that.
The thing about this, is there's an established pecking order in wrestling when it comes to the top titles, and it's one that is virtually never, ever broken. It's booking 101 to ensure that The Big One is passed around as carefully as possible, and when someone's about to break out of the pack it's often telegraphed months in advance. They usually need a Rumble win, or an underdog PPV narrative, never in a shock victory on an otherwise unremarkable night of TV.
To simultaneously give a crowd something they want so badly, but still catch them completely off guard, is something hardly ever seen in WWE either before or since.