41 Most Disgusting Promotional Tactics In Wrestling History RANKED
8. 2016 - The Kimbo Slice Vs. Dada 5000 Fight
The Observer also covers the world of mixed martial-arts which, being a combat sport, is also disgusting.
The vast majority of readers are wrestling fans, though, which explains why the pseudo-sport dominates the majority of categories.
In 2016, to further build Brock Lesnar as a merciless, invincible killer, WWE had him shoot bludgeon Randy Orton’s skull with the point of his elbow, resulting in significant hard-way blood loss and a concussion. While the charges were dropped, Adam Rose was arrested in May for domestic violence; he sought to monetise this by selling a t-shirt with his mug shot printed on it. Sasha Banks teased retiring in an angle clearly patterned after Daniel Bryan. That was rough.
You’d infer, given strong competition and the relative lack of coverage, that promoting Kimbo Slice Vs. Dada 5000 was very bad. You’d be correct.
Promoted by Bellator, it was put together because Kimbo and Dada, former high school classmates, had both earned notoriety in the backyard brawl circuit - think of it as an inter-promotional dream match of sorts. How ironic.
It was an ultra-bleak spectacle. Neither man was remotely in good enough cardio condition. Dada lost via TKO. It should have been called off far earlier; Dada was unable to protect his face for at least 30 seconds as Kimbo unleashed punch after punch after punch. None were particularly stiff, but Dada was still visibly struggling - from what was thought to be exhaustion and dehydration. It turns out, according to friend Billy Corben, that Dada was in fact dying. His kidneys had shut down.
Neither man had any business being in a professional cage to begin with. Fate was very nearly tempted; Dada entered cardiac arrest backstage, his heart stopped beating, and he was briefly in critical condition.
In a macabre twist, his opponent died months later on June 3, at 42, of congestive heart failure. While pre-fight testing revealed that Slice had no issues with his heart, the result was overturned when it was revealed that he had steroids in his system.
Recklessness of the ultimate, gravest order.
7. 1990 - Jose Gonzalez “Stabs” Atsushi Onita
Jesus Christ.
Atsushi Onita was the founder of Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in Japan, and the man responsible for the Exploding Barbed Wire Death match. A born entrepreneur - and carny - he wasn’t athletic nor durable enough to make the grade as a superstar headliner, and besides, his abiding interests lay to the west. A devotee of the Sheik, Onita spotted a gap in the Japanese market for hardcore plunder - a style behind which he could conceal his physical limitations. His mind was also attuned to the cheaper way of promotion.
In 1990, seeking to capitalise on Bruiser Brody’s death, Onita participated in macabre cosplay.
He arranged a match with Jose Gonzalez - the pull being that Brody was beloved in Japan, and Onita had vowed vengeance in his memory - and flew to Puerto Rico to build it up.
Unbeknownst to Gonzalez - apparently - Onita worked his big angle. After Gonzalez left the worked press conference, Onita staged photographs, shot by members of the Japanese press he had recruited, that showed him bleeding from the stomach. In the images, Onita’s head is also bleeding. That is because the shallow cuts he had given to himself had not produced a strong enough visual, so he gigged his forehead and smeared the blood on the white shirt covering his gut.
As hideous as the tactic was, it half-worked. Of course, no match ever took place, and Onita was stigmatised as a scumbag in the aftermath - but this level of notoriety did no harm in establishing FMW as a dangerous, unseemly, and compelling promotion.