9 Funniest Times Wrestlers CORPSED On Live TV

Corpsing in wrestling is theoretically botching in wrestling, but why are these two things never considered the same? 

When a move falls apart during a match, the facade of the work is exposed yes, but what matters most - beyond the health of the performer if something goes badly wrong - is exactly how much the immersion in the fiction was broken in the moment. Does the mistake create such an emotional diversion that nothing else matters for the remainder of the action? Is the story so broken by that sudden, out-of-nowhere lack of co-operation and/or lapse of concentration?

The answer, more often than not, is no (despite what bad faith actors would say), but the dreaded botch nonetheless results in disappointment. Meanwhile somebody breaking character - the cardinal sin at the heart of this - to laugh unexpectedly deepens the joy. Laughter in general is often a form of release, but when a wrestler does so on camera, it's just about the biggest invitation to the real world behind the scenes this side of somebody going out there and completely shooting on a colleague. And much nicer. In many of the cases below, the audience can be heard roaring at the mere sight of a giggle, such is the magic of the unexpected audience.

Which makes it all the strangers when wrestlers are determined not to break...

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Stone Cold Steve Austin's 2001 heel turn might have been a generational commercial flop that expedited the end of a boom period for WWE, but never had 'The Rattlesnake' been permitted to flex his comedic muscles quite as much as when the rest of the business was in the bin. Combining that with The Undertaker's desperate will not to break character and/or drop his hard man visage made for magic on the Invasion pay-per-view go-home edition of SmackDown. 

The whole promo is a preposterous bit of business, with Austin echoing the motivational orders of Vince McMahon, seemingly in an attempt to pop everybody in the room the same way he is people in the building. To apply a bit of critical analysis, it's not particularly best for business considering how high the stakes were intended to be, but Austin's in such irresistible form that it's hard to really fight for the supposed integrity of the WCW invasion.

It appears to be a build-up of nearly-laughs that forces 'The Deadman' to temporarily cover his face, and at various points when the camera pans out, it appears as though teammates Chris Jericho and Kane are struggling just as much to hold it together. Only Kurt Angle (himself a world class comedic operator at the time) seems to be able to maintain a straight face, but he'd worked so much with Austin at this point that he was clearly more match-fit than the rest.