In the tailored world of sports entertainment, every action is a cog in a well-oiled machine. Even though violence is essential to the product, it is immensely repetitive, sugared and toned down, so as to remove any semblance of shock from the family oriented programming of the WWE today.
However, beyond the bright lights and outside its awnings, there has been a slew of dangerous attacks on WWE Superstars. Nowhere near in their fatality to the culture of off ring attacks that define WWE storylines, some of these have come quite close to ending careers and paralyzing lives.
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While some Superstars have been known to be intentionally aggressive in their public doings, others have faced the glint of an overzealous fan’s knife, just as others have had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The following is a list of pro-wrestlers who have encountered violent situations and opportunely, lived to tell the tale.
#1 Wade Barrett:
Read Barrett’s account of the incident:
As I walked through an alleyway in search of a taxi to the airport, I heard footsteps behind me and a split-second later, I was jumped from behind and stabbed in the back with an eight-inch blade. I remember feeling the initial pain of the wound, but it was very quickly masked by numbness as the pain endorphins kicked in.
It is common knowledge that “The King of Bad News” had once dabbled and unsurprisingly, excelled in bare knuckle boxing back in England. The underground fighting scene was most prominent in Europe and Barrett had a brawl scheduled against a particularly “dirty” opponent in the town of Budapest, Hungary.
After defeating him in three minutes, the future Nexus leader was awarded the winner’s stash of twenty thousand pounds. A feeling of dread had already begun to roil inside him which was exacerbated by the lump sum he now carried on his person.
The place was crawling with a whole host of unsavory characters and every single one of them wanted to get their hands on the £20K winner’s prize that was now sitting in my bag. Having all those eyes burning a hole through you as you stand alone in some Eastern-European hell hole is a very sobering experience, let me tell you.
His search for a taxi to the airport led him inside a seedy alley. Suddenly, he heard footsteps on the brick laid ground, and almost immediately was impaled on the back by an eight-inch blade. The pain shot through his body, but his fortitude and unwillingness to part with his hard earned reward undercut the crippling agony.
Barrett does not divulge any details of how he overcame the assailant but humorously hints at the extent of damage, by comparing the attacker’s face to “minced beef from the supermarket”. Nonetheless, he made it to the airport and out of the infernal situation, adding to his anecdote, “life for me has always been full of scars and scrapes, but I make sure that I leave any situation with the money in my pocket.”
#2 Perry Saturn:
In a 2010 interview with Bill Apter, the former Radicalz member spoke for the first time about his tragic spiraling into methamphetamine addiction, a consequence of his attempts to recover from a gunshot injury he had incurred back in 2004.
Off the grid for a considerable period of time, Saturn seemed to be picking up broken pieces, and nursing guilt for the untoward direction his life had taken after that fateful night. Yet not once did he mention the woman whose life he had saved, or the steel plate and screws holding his neck in place.
In April 2004, Saturn was driving through Atlanta when he encountered two men forcing themselves upon a helpless woman. Intervening, Saturn managed to stop the rape but was shot at in the ensuing scuffle. Lodged in his neck and right shoulder were a couple of 0.25 calibre bullets, the impact of which Saturn later confessed to mistaking for a punch.
However once the adrenaline wore off, he was crippled with pain. The only respite came in the form of an advertent descent into methamphetamine addiction, that saw him slip into decay and decrepitude, till his reemergence in 2010.
#3 Jamie Noble:
On September 28, 2016, the former ROH World Champion was stabbed outside his home at the Shadowood mobile home park in Mercer County, West Virginia, following an escalating episode of road rage.
As narrated on his Facebook page, Noble was the victim of a violent brawl that trailed him home after he apparently cut off his assailant’s car while driving back. Upon reaching the trailer park, he was confronted by the driver who, turning a deaf ear to Noble’s apology, started raining punches on him till the former Superstar tackled him to the ground.
At this point, two passengers who had been observing the scuffle, rushed at him with a knife and punctured him in the back and the sides, while also attempting to reach his throat but fortunately missing and gashing the shoulder instead.
With a collapsed lung from the injury, Noble was rushed to the emergency room and underwent surgery. While his lungs took four days to resume their function, his recuperation is still a continuing process.
Despite announcing a cash reward for the identity of his attackers, there has been zero progress on that front, while as of yesterday, Jamie has returned to his backstage responsibility as a producer on the WWE.
#4 Arn Anderson:
Here is 2 Cold Scorpio’s account of the fight between Sid and Arn Anderson:
“They were covered in fucking blood. Sid Vicious got the fucking scissors and got Arn Anderson by the hair and he’s booting him in the fucking face, stabbing him with the scissors every which way. Arn Anderson got blood spitting out of him like a horror movie and shit, man. I see Sid kicking Arn Anderson’s nose and it does a 180 turn straight the fuck up and shit. I’m like, ‘Damn!'.”
While some narratives situate the incident in Lancashire, England others put it as occurring in a hotel on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany.
Exhausted from long travel hours, Sid and Arn Anderson were among a merry crowd at the hotel bar, drinking copious amounts of beer, when an offhand remark (about Ric Flair) from Sid’s purple stained mouth put the frivolity on a check. The only immediate spillage was, according to Sid, Anderson throwing beer on his face in response.
Both men, restrained by their colleagues, then calmly proceeded to their hotel rooms.
Still fuming, Sid broke a leg off a chair and (allegedly) hit Anderson on the head, when the latter answered the door. A scuffle erupted which soon escalated into a skirmish when Anderson grabbed a pair of scissors in retaliation. Each man used it to stab the other, till Sid incurred four cuts while Anderson bled from around twenty gashes.
It was with the intervention of 2 Cold Scorpio that the men were separated and rushed to the hospital, both bleeding profusely.
All gory details aside, this event became a significant measure of the draining schedules and stifling physical and mental pressure that pro-wrestlers were often subject too. While Anderson got off with only a suspension, Sid was ousted from WCW after several performers threatened to walk out if he was not released.
This incident was also a possible inspiration behind his Sycho Sid gimmick under the WWF. Nevertheless, the two have mended their differences with apologies and goodwill, though Anderson still refrains from spilling details about the incident as it had happened.
#5 Alberto Del Rio:
“It was an incident with a drunk guy, and I got the worst part of it,” Del Rio said when aked about the incident.
Several conflicting reports bring to question the veracity of the incident. However, the crux of the matter is that in early October, Del Rio was attacked by a knife-wielding homeless man outside a San Antonio restaurant.
While, in one report by MLW Radio, there is no mention of Paige, in others, such as the one by Dave Meltzer, the former Divas Champion is posited at the scene of the crime. According to this narrative, Del Rio took the assailant down while he was still flailing the knife.
At this point, Paige interfered and was shoved by the attacker. Immediately, Del Rio rushed to check on her, leaving the man to flee the site on the former’s car (in some reports, on foot). In a video interview with TMZ though, the former WWE World Champion said that the reason he sprung into action was an insult the drunk had directed towards Paige.
It was an incident with a guy who disrespected my girl. And I was just, you know — I got in a street fight. I got a little bit hurt. (Del Rio)
Suffering multiple wounds on his arm and other parts of his body, Del Rio, or more conveniently, El Patron, was unable to make his flight to the Lucha Libre AAA show he was booked for. Though the disparate accounts put several key facts to contestation, there is no denying that Del Rio was injured and has since, thankfully, recovered.
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