12 BRUTAL Wrestling Ribs That Made It To Live TV

6. Something’s Fishy

Mae Young was a delight.

One of the very best supporting cast members ever, she was famously bang up for anything. An octogenerian who took brutal inter-gender bumps: the pitch-black comedy was a delight, and it was made all the funnier when the heels would celebrate hitting her with their finish like they’d just won the World title in the main event of WrestleMania. Kurt Angle’s achievement:celebration ratio was hilariously uneven in particular. This is a man who won Olympic gold, and channelled the adrenaline rush of a lifetime’s hard work after beating up an old lady.

You weren’t meant to laugh at such violence - because you were meant to think she’d been killed - but that’s precisely what made it so funny. Bubba Ray Dudley was so taken with attempting to maim Mae Young that he looked like he’d just engaged in eight hours of tantric sex - which is still a shorter length of time than his Heat Wave ‘99 promo.

Less funny was a rib played on Eric Bischoff at Bad Blood 2003 - a year in which the sick thrills of the Attitude Era were diminishing with the speed of Johnny Gargano’s tongue lashing at Triple H’s boot.

At the pay-per-view, Steve Austin “faced” Eric Bischoff in a ‘Redneck Triathlon’. It was a dumb, very broad segment designed to humiliate Bischoff, as part of which Mae - stripped down to a thong - gave him the Bronco Buster. The rib?

Young had stuffed sardines in her underwear and smudged them all over his face.

WWE’s upper management was, and is, a bunch of glorified teenage boys.