10 Wrestling "Shoots" That Were Total Works

Today - in an era where the spot has been repeated and even been included in video games - it seems intuitive that the ring explosion featured in a Big Show-Brock Lesnar match in 2003 was planned. At the time, though, it was so outrageous and outside the box that fans honestly considered the possibility that it was for real.

The bout took place on the 12 June 2003 episode of SmackDown and saw Lesnar intercept Show as the giant climbed up the turnbuckles. Lesnar then took Show over with a superplex, but the combined weight caused the ring setup to collapse, with all of the ropes falling loose and both men lying motionless in the ring as the show ended. It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime mishap, and Tazz yelling "Holy sh*t!" didn't hurt the credibility, either.

Of course, the ring was set up to buckle that way, but it didn't stop people from thinking it could have been real. In 2015, Big Show finally admitted in an interview with Sports Illustrated that it was all a work, saying, "On hundreds of interviews, I have lied right through my teeth and said it's a shoot. But if you get a chance to suspend people's reality just for an instant, for a second, it's good for them."