9 Wrestling Matches That Turned Into Real Life Shoots

5. Bruiser Brody Terrifies Lex Luger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epmXA8w0Qjo Once again, stories vary as to the reason for this infamous incident at an NWA show in Florida in January 1987. The massive, surly Bruiser Brody was notorious for refusing to job to people he didn€™t like. Part of his uncooperative reputation stemmed from his refusal to stay in any one promotion for too long €“ Brody liked to travel, and hated to be kept in one place too long. The rest of it? The man was genuinely uncooperative. Placed inside a steel cage, a match between the perma-tanned Adonis Luger versus the enormous wild man looked on paper like a guaranteed crowd-pleaser: it was a story that wrote itself. That may well have been the case, but they still needed two men to tell it, and Brody simply refused to work. The match began awkwardly enough, and soon slowed to nothing at all, Brody refusing to sell Luger€™s punches. In fact, it was actually worse than that: betraying professional wrestling€™s cardinal rule, Brody had simply stopped acknowledging that Luger€™s fake punches were even happening. Luger had no idea what to do. The cooperation so essential to putting on a professional wrestling match simply wasn€™t forthcoming, and he was getting nervous. At one point, genuine hard man Brody took him down nonchalantly, almost as if trying to prove a point, and then let him back up again. Finally, Luger and referee Bill Alfonso came up with a solution, and Luger unleashed a barrage of worked punches, shoved Alfonso when he tried to intervene and so got himself disqualified (despite the fact that cage matches were supposed to be no disqualification bouts). Luger then climbed the cage and leapt over the top in his eagerness to leave the madman behind. What happened that night varies depending on who you talk to. Everyone knew that Luger was jumping ship to Jim Crockett Promotions soon, and €“ aloof, arrogant and with the reputation of being more into himself than the business €“ Luger wasn€™t well liked at the time. Some say Crockett asked Luger not to lose the match and Brody took offense, while some say he simply did it off his own initiative to embarrass both Luger and the local NWA promoter (who he€™d already had a difference of opinion with). Some say that the reason Luger ran from the ring is because the terrifying Brody had razor blades hidden in his finger tape and that the match would have gotten bloody if he hadn€™t high-tailed it. Whichever, it€™s a story that €“ once again €“ exposed the business to the crowd€ two men unable to have a decent match because of one man's stubbornness, the web of cooperation that underpins professional wrestling having collapsed between them.