8 Real Reactions Of WCW Wrestlers Being Punished On Air

Were you ever told at school, having whispered one 'witty' aside to your pal too many, to stand up and share it before the class? Or, in the case of particularly cruel teachers fed up of rubbers and other assorted stationery being hurled between desks, to climb up on a chair and sing 'I'm a little teapot'?

Hopefully you weren't, but if the answer is 'yes', then you'll understand first hand the hideous anguish of being dressed down before your peers. Thankfully, this tends to abate once you enter the professional world, where HR protocols dictate any disciplinary action takes place behind closed doors. There are usually procedures.

Professional wrestling, as has been stated umpteen times in the past, has no real commonality with this world Years after graduating, superstars in major promotions - one in particular - can expect to be humiliated for their apparent misdemeanours not just before their peers, but before a live TV audience. The embarrassment is the punishment.

WWE, who delight in spite, is obviously the standard bearer of this practice. But their expired rival WCW was known to air its grievances on, well, the air too. Did they all take it on the chin and move on?

Come 2000, Hulk Hogan's propensity for Machiavellian backstage politicking was known to the general audience enough that it could be worked into one of Vince Russo's infamous worked-shoot bullsh*t angles and still carry a semblance of sense (in as much as any of them could).

And so it was that at that year's Bash at the Beach, WCW Champion Jeff Jarrett 'lied down' for the Hulkster, the implication being that the perma-tanned perma-champ had used his creative power to dictate it so behind the scenes. To this point, the plan wasn't to punish Hogan with the exposé, but get fans talking about the phony 'reality' they'd just witnessed.

So far, so good. But then Russo, being Russo, had to spoil it all by saying something stupid like, oh, anything that typically falls from his idiot mouth. Once Hogan had left the stage, satisfied with his piece of business, the WCW booker launched into a bitter rant against the departed 'champion'. He gave the belt back to Jarrett, before calling Hogan a "bald piece of sh*t" who didn't "give a sh*t" about the company. The irate New Yorker's words were not part of the plan, but instead a stream of consciousness airing his own frustrations.

Hogan's reaction to his real-life dressing down was typical of the man: he took his on-air firing for real, and refused to work for WCW ever again, taking them to court over the libel instead.