The inadvertent humor of wrestling sabotage

A long time ago, for whatever reason, there was some sort of beef between Hercules Hernandez and Sid Justice. I don’t care to know the nature of this beef, but regardless when they were put together in a singles match, it turned into this hilarious 30-second squash match where Hercules refused to flat out sell (pretend to get hurt) by anything that Sid did, before the match concluded quickly with Sid delivering a powerbomb where Hercules dead-fished it and popped right back up and walked away upon the three count. Supposedly Herc was fired after this display, but aside from making the smarks laugh, he made Sid’s persona look weaker than it was arduously built up to be.

Not quite as long ago, when Bill Goldberg was rising in WCW, he was slated to have a match with former English circus shooter, Steven Regal.  I say “have a match,” because Goldberg couldn’t actually wrestle, so I couldn’t really say “wrestled.” But it was something that Regal felt the obligation to exploit, to the fans, to management, and to the other boys in the back whom might also be jaded by the rapid and aggressive pushing of Goldberg. Whereas Goldberg had been having 30-180 second squash matches for weeks on end, Regal put him through a gauntlet of basic wrestling holds and chess moves that Goldberg was completely incapable of, on national television, getting out of or countering.  After the display, Regal was fired, and soon after jumped to the WWF, but the damage was done; most everyone knew definitively that Goldberg couldn’t actually wrestle.

Continue reading “The inadvertent humor of wrestling sabotage”