9 Wrestling Matches That Turned Into Real Life Shoots

8. JBL Wrecks The Blue Meanie's Face

Amiable loudmouth John €˜Bradshaw€™ Layfield is, by all accounts, one of the sweetest men you can meet backstage at a WWE show these days. It wasn€™t always the case. During his full time wrestling career, and especially after he was shoehorned into the main event scene, JBL became one of the most notorious bullies the company had ever seen. Wrestler€™s Court is one of the ways in which the old school police the roster of any promotion: someone screws up, and the veterans are judge, jury and often executioner. JBL€™s pull with the WWF and WWE office and his friendship with Vince McMahon and the Undertaker, amongst others, lead to him assuming that role more often than not, especially on Smackdown during the brand split. What€™s worse than a bully? A bully with authority: in this case, a huge bully with authority and an excuse to hit you as hard as he liked on national television. On June 21st 2005, WWE staged a full-on brawl in the ring at ECW One Night Stand, one of a series of episodes written to create a rivalry between the WWE faithful and the upstart brand (ECW was, by this point, owned by WWE, and the company was testing the waters to see if a WWE-branded revival of the ECW name would succeed in the 21st century). In the middle of the brawl, JBL went into business for himself and specifically targeted ECW original the Blue Meanie €“ a much smaller, overweight man in denim cut offs and t-shirt, who for many encapsulated what they€™d disliked about ECW in the first place. No one€™s entirely sure why Layfield went for the Meanie, even today€ reports vary, but some suggest that he€™d taken exception to something Meanie had said online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9TOsHnTRyo JBL tags Meanie several times very heavily in the confusion of the brawl, although it€™s difficult to actually see much in the video. The picture of the Blue Meanie speaks for itself, however €“ in addition to the beating itself, several staples Meanie had in his head from a nasty cage match the night before were sprung by the attack. Meanie got his own back in a match between the two on Smackdown a few weeks later: fellow ECW alumni Stevie Richards opening up a massive gash on JBL€™s head with a vicious unprotected chair shot and saying afterwards, €œJBL had it coming. It€™s that simple.€