9 Wrestling Matches That Turned Into Real Life Shoots

2. Stanislaus Zybysko Screws The Gold Dust Trio

Going further back in time, this story is considered one of the first ever examples of a wrestler going into business for himself, at a time when the business of professional wrestling as we understand it today was in its infancy. The legendary Stanislaus Zybysko was one of the most talented and influential wrestlers in history, working thrilling contests all over Europe and the United States in the early 20th century. With the gradual move of the industry towards worked feuds and matches, many of the older old school had been forced to shift to the new style, and Zybysko was no exception. €˜Toots€™ Mondt, credited with the introduction of a more dramatic, exaggerated wrestling style incorporating big moves and a fully scripted finish, formed the €˜Gold Dust Trio€™ with the great €˜Strangler€™ Lewis and Billy Sandow, who would control professional wrestling in the US in the 1920s. Like silent movie stars adapting to €˜the talkies€™, not everyone would survive the transition. Zybysko€™s run with the World Title in 1921 had been a box office failure, and ex-football star Wayne Munn was being booked to be the next big thing. In order to give non-wrestler Munn instant credibility as a fighting champion, the Gold Dust Trio would book Zybysko to challenge him for the title. Although Zybysko was in his late forties by this point, his reputation as a pre-eminent grappler still carried weight. What Mondt and his cronies didn€™t realise was that rival promoter Joe Stecher had sabotaged their championship match: he and his brother had offered the aging fighter a chance at big money once again. During the match, Zybysko would drop the script completely, reverting to the shoot wrestling of his youth and pinning the hapless champion over and over and over. The referee, in front of a baying crowd and faced with little alternative, was forced to award the National Wrestling Association world heavyweight championship to Zybysko, who would go on to drop the championship to Stecher a few weeks later. The idea of giving a worked championship to a worked champion in a worked wrestling match was years ahead of its time: and following Zybysko€™s Screwjob of the Gold Dust Trio and poor Munn (who barely ever wrestled again), it would be almost half a century before the experiment was tried again. The era of the shoot wrestler, or €˜hooker€™ as the worked champion would continue for decades to come: at least Lou Thesz could defend himself, if the challenger tried to go into business for himself.