9. The Undertaker KOs The Referee At The Start Of The Match Versus Shawn Michaels - In Your House: Ground Zero, September 1997
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcEHKQqohc0 The entire arc of this feud escalating from being built around a chairshot to having to be solved in the Hell in a Cell structure is masterful. However, it wasn't the chairshots take either Taker or Shawn took in the feud that strikes me as the scariest moment overall. Actually, from a psychology standpoint, it's the referee getting "recklessly" bumped before the match even begins at In Your House: Ground Zero that pretty much sets the tenor for just how "outside of the box" this feud would eventually become. From a pure psychological standpoint, if a seven foot tall tattooed undead man is willing to unmercifully smack around someone completely unrelated to anything regarding the issue you have with him because he's in the way, that's a great reason to be completely scared of his intentions towards you. It also nicely set the tone for the level of fear and insanity there was to come.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.