41 Most Disgusting Promotional Tactics In Wrestling History RANKED

34. 1983 - WWF Uses Broken Neck In An Angle

In 1983, Eddie Gilbert - one of the most charismatic and underrated heels ever, and a genius wrestling mind - suffered a broken neck when he crashed his car into the back of a lorry. He was on the way to eat at Vince McMahon’s house. Big things were forecast for the prodigy.

Gilbert made a shock return rather quickly and too early, which may have hastened his reliance on painkillers. He returned to the WWF as the protege of Bob Backlund, before discovering his priceless ‘Hot Stuff’ persona, which advanced Backlund’s rivalry with Bill ‘the Masked Superstar’ Eadie. Superstar “re-injured” Gilbert by blasting him with a series of swinging neckbreakers on the exposed concrete. This angle worked because it was believable. Gilbert, in the eyes of upset fans, was vulnerable. Masked Superstar was diabolical. It’s nothing that wrestling hasn’t done, does now, and will do forever. Isn’t this just classic pro wrestling heat?

Again, this was the early days of the Observer. Wrestling was never a particularly wholesome business, but two things converged as the 1980s unfolded.

Competition replaced collaboration, as Vince McMahon initiated his expansion, fuelling a grabby sense of desperation and a “whatever works” philosophy to prevent the walls from closing in. Meanwhile, Meltzer, at his peak a superb revolutionary in his field, very quickly rose to prominence - and was there to capture and circulate it all.

This wasn’t quite the case in 1983 - an origin point, effectively, for both the landscape of stateside wrestling as we know it and discuss it.

It’s not as if the voter base knew, at the time, the long-term effects of painkiller abuse and the forthcoming epidemic. This, genuinely, was probably too close to the reviled Backlund for the nascent hipsters to sanction.