7 Times Wrestlers Lost Real-Life Fights With Non-Wrestlers
5. Bob Backlund Loses Bar Fight
It's a tired cliché that the wrestling industry is like no other, a truism constantly made plain by stories of the business' most bizarre traditions.
Bar fights are a case in point. In most other professions, roughhousing with a member of the public - and in some instances, biting their facial features clean off - would be something to clog up the HR department's inbox first thing Monday morning.
Wrestling, as ever, is the exception. During the dark old days, stars of the territories would only be punished for breaking pool cues over punters' mushes if they happened to emerge from the scrap as the loser. Jim Ross told how Bill Watts, who couldn't be more old school if he was the University of Bologna, had a blanket policy of fining Mid-South employees who lost fights. With stars like Steve Williams and the Steiners, it was never a likely occurrence.
Bob Backlund, despite his considerable amateur wrestling acumen, was not cut from the same abrasive cloth as the aforementioned bruisers. Whilst working for Watts' mentor Leroy McGuirk at the start of his career, the fresh-faced Backlund found himself on the wrong end of a fist after proverbially spilling a patron's pint. Told by fellow pros he'd be fired by McGuirk if word got out, Backlund was advised to head back in the bar for a rematch. He did, and he won.
Who knows how the history of the WWF would have altered had he called for a cab on the curb?