17 Most Brutal Hazing Horror Stories In Wrestling
Wrestlers that experienced the true horrors of a wrestling locker room, one punishment at a time
Hazing in wrestling was, for decades, considered by those within the sacred walls of the locker room something everybody had to endure.
The justification was either that it was good for morale amongst competitive athletes that need releases beyond when the red light's on, or something they'd experienced that they felt necessary to pass down. Generations of kicking the cat, until at long last the cats kicked back. Over time, the veterans that presided over things got too old to keep at it, and younger ones coming through realised they could break traditions and make new ones. Wrestler's Court was WWE's way of supposedly managing or formalising the institutional bullying, but as recently as 2022, CM Punk publicly referred that as "the most insecure small d*ck energy average white man embarrassment to the wrestling business". Various performers have since suggested all of that side of the industry has thankfully become a thing of the past, and whilst there still must be clagnuts from bygone times, it's certainly nicer to think of lots of the below no longer featuring as part of the wrestler experience.
Better best forgotten? Mostly. Older heads will talk about reinforcing trust and camaraderie, but there are ways to do that without forcing actual bonafide horror on your colleagues. Never mind breaking in to the business, some of the hazing here resulted in many trying to break out. Including...
17. Dick Measuring Contest
Poor 'The Dicks'.
What about their WWE run wasn't a brutal hazing horror story? Upon getting the supposed dream WWE call-up in 2005, developmental prospects Tank Toland and Chad Wicks were rebranded as James and Chad Dick, and repurposed as Chippendale-type figures with airhead personas to match their dumb monikers. Regulars on the weekend shows without making much of a dent on the main roster, it was fairly clear from the off that they were going to end up disposable rather than distinguished. On top of all of that and to make matters absolutely as worse as they could possibly be halfway through the 2000s, they had to endure all this as part of the SmackDown locker room.
On any given night, and if you were any given wrestler who got on the wrong side of the self-appointed blue brand police (and plenty of them feature elsewhere in this list), you were potentially doomed. Dismissal came the way of The Dicks via hazing that spiralled rapidly out of control.
Per Toland's own recollection, things booted off when, at a house show in Mexico, somebody backstage wired in a crying baby noise every time Chad tagged in. Later at the hotel, Chad had been stirred up so much about it that he wanted to fight his own partner to prove his toughness to a crew that weren't going to respect him either way. It escalated to the point of the pair physically fighting, with the roster taking bets on it, and Tank ultimately having to batter and bloody his partner effectively in self-defence.
It was a grisly way to go for them, but go they went - the pair were promptly released in the aftermath.