20 Most Infamous Real Life Wrestling Fights Of All Time
10. Kevin Nash Vs. Roddy Piper (1997)
The issues between Piper and Nash were down to Piper's performance in a tag match on Nitro that pitted Piper and Ric Flair against Nash and Scott Hall.
Once the bell rang, Nash became irritated with Piper immediately changing the pre-arranged structure of the contest they had agreed upon backstage. Yet Piper's apparent indiscretion was not an act of malice, but rather a generational disparity; in Piper's era, pre-planning spots and rehearsing sequences was not commonplace - he was more used to a style that called for a performer to react to the tempo of an audience and call matches on the fly.
Nash, however, was already irritated that Piper had used his stroke to have Sean Waltman removed from a pay-per-view six-man tag match and replaced with footballer Kevin Greene, so he didn't see his deviation from the script that evening as anything other than an intended snub. In protest, Big Kev decided to briefly stop selling. Piper eventually returned to the plan and let the Outsiders throw him around, but his conditioning was poor and his timing off, so he called for the duo to go home only halfway into the match's allotted time.
Nash was seething about Piper changing everything on a whim, and decided to confront him to put him in his place. Piper was with Ric Flair and Eric Bischoff in his private locker room, unlacing his boots, when he heard a series of thumping knocks on the door. It was Nash, flanked by Hall and Waltman, who subsequently burst through the door yelling, "You think youre running the place around here?"
The big man launched at Piper, but before he could make it to the stunned wrestler, Piper's bodyguard Craig Malley blocked Nash's path - however, he quickly moved aside when he realised Nash wasn't about to slow down for him. Nash continued to yell, Piper fired back that Nash was a liar, and that his version of events was not true. By now, Nash had heard enough, so he opened up his hand and slapped Piper across the face, sending him staggering backwards into the dressing room wall.
Piper quickly shook it off and tried to throw a kick in the direction of Nash's injured knee, but he came up short. Hot Rod later claimed that he not aware Nash even had a bad knee, but that if he had been he would have gone for it anyway. The other wrestlers in the vicinity of the incident acted quickly to make sure the situation didn't get too far out of control; Malley and Flair pulled the pair apart, though Nash remained livid about the incident as he was being dragged away, threatening to get revenge at the Great American Bash pay-per-view in Moline. Fortunately tempers had calmed by then and the match passed without incident.
Winner: Roddy Piper, because Nash is the one who ultimately backed down