1. Stone Cold Steve Austin's Broken Neck
To say Stone Cold Steve Austin was a big star in the summer of 1997 was a huge understatement. Embroiled in a feud with The Hart Foundation, Austin was consistently in the main event and the co-tag team champion was riding a wave of momentum that dated all the way back to the 1996 King of the Ring and the dawn of 3:16 a wave of momentum that would eventually lead him to the WWE Championship. That momentum was nearly stopped dead on August 3 of that year during his Intercontinental Championship match at SummerSlam when Austin was the victim of a botched Tombstone Piledriver from Owen Hart. In a showing of true professionalism, the match finished with Austin as the victor and new Intercontinental Champion. However, Austin, who was temporarily paralysed after the piledriver, had suffered a broken neck, putting Austin's rise and possibly career on hiatus. The WWE would vacate the tag team championship the next month at In Your House: Ground Zero, where it would later be claimed by The Headbangers. The WWE would also vacate the Intercontinental Championship, also putting it up for grabs in a tournament. Owen Hart would win that tournament at In Your House: Badd Blood in October, but only after Stone Cold interfered in the match, hitting Farooq with the title. He would win the title from Hart again at the Survivor Series. While most of these injuries only wound up resulting in the pause button being hit on the injured Superstars' careers, some had far reaching effects that were never recovered from and all of them left the WWE scrambling to pick up the pieces and keep the show going.