5 WWE Superstars you did not expect would ever tap out

5: Kane

Since his gimmick’s debut at Badd Blood : In Your House on October 5, 1997, Kane had been a fiery, unstoppable force till well into the mid-2000s. The infernal monster, standing over seven foot tall, was billed as Paul Bearer’s son and the Undertaker’s long-lost half-brother, whose demented, tormented self, lay behind his equally destructive ring activity. In perhaps one of the lengthiest active careers in the WWE, Kane had undergone a couple of gimmick changes yet none as dreaded as the sinister masked-pyromaniac of the later Attitude Era. This period saw the Big Red Machine’s dominant run both in singles matches as well as tag-team and Royal Rumble scenarios. It is obvious that any submission to be booked on such a towering character had to come at the hands of two of the greatest in-ring technicians in WWE history.

The first of these occurred on November 1, 2001, at a Smackdown event when Kane took on Kurt Angle for the WCW United States Championship. Around this time, Angle had begun seeing the nascent forms of a feud with Chris Benoit over the former’s claim to being the best wrestler on the roster. It would be erroneous to assume that Angle had no intention of making Kane submit to his recently innovated Ankle Lock in order to make a point. However, executing a submission on Kane required unprecedented levels of fortitude and a little bit of interference. Several steel chair strikes to Kane’s leg by an interfering Stone Cold Steve Austin, who was eventually chased out of the ring by the Undertaker, led Angle to set his sights on his weakened limb. Despite Angle’s renewed strikes to the injured leg, Kane was able to outmanoeuvre the Olympian using a handful of his own moves against him. However, he was unable to counter a second Ankle Lock which the champion concocted out of Kane’s attempt at a climactic tombstone piledriver. Making the monster writhe and groan in the middle of the ring, Kurt Angle kept twisting his ankle till he pounded the mat in a surge of pain and panic, losing the match in a surprising finish.

The only other time when Kane had been coerced into submission was at the Bad Blood pay per view in June 2004, in a World Heavyweight Championship match against Chris Benoit. One year ago, he had been led to unmasking himself for the first time since his debut, as part of a match stipulation. Revealing a charred, psychologically unstable maniac, Kane turned heel by chokeslamming his match partner Rob Van Dam and continued his incendiary rampage on several segments such as an interview with Jim Ross, an attack on Linda McMahon and an interference in a Buried Alive match where he buried the Undertaker under a mound of debris. The monstrous heel persona continued during his match with Chris Benoit, one of the company’s top babyface technical wrestlers back then. Benoit’s submission move, the Crippler Crossface had won him the World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania XX against Triple H and Shawn Michaels. This was the first time that the main event of a Wrestlemania had ended in a submission and it was only proper that such a move, which was extremely popular with fans, go underscored. Kane’s tapping out to the Crossface came as an expected booking, particularly with the David against Goliath scenario and the way their gimmicks, ruthless aggression wrestler and depraved monstrous lunatic respectively, were slated to turn out.