Look it’s hard being rad all the time. We can’t even maintain character on a livestream, and wrestlers are supposed to be out here, pretending to be superheroes, supervillains or whatever Otis is, all while a nosehair away from potential injury.
Not to mention all the pitfalls of live broadcasting and a show whose segments are frequently thrown together at the last minute by the worst most republican pepperami and yeah, the fact that wrestlers are able to maintain character at all is something close to miracle work.
We’ve all seen the candid photos of wrestlers breaking characters when the cameras aren’t rolling, Triple H consoling a child, Baron Corbin consoling a child which is a significant downgrade for the child and undertaker going mental after a hot tag at a house show.
But do we all remember the times that wrestlers broke character and it actually made it to air? Well, that’s why I’m here. Merry Christmas.
These are Ten Times A WWE Wrestler Broke Character On Camera.
10. For Fox Sake
Alicia Fox, hat advocate, northern lights suplex grandmaster, and all-together madarse, was an… unpredictable character.
Sometimes she’d show up, do a no-nonsense job and be relatively normal, other times she’d bring out one of her patented mental tantrums, she was a character always on the precipice of having something to do, but never quite being a featured player.
You never knew which Foxy you were going to get, which makes it all the funnier on the September 5, 2016, episode of Raw when, suddenly, we got both at the same time.
Alicia Fox was backstage talking to Nia Jax about Nia beating up one of her jobber friends, when WWE remembers Alicia’s gimmick and have her start throwing shit.
She proceeds to accidentally CLATTER Nia in the face with a box, and then in WWEville they say, Alicia Fox’s heart grew three sizes that day.
Suddenly human compassion overcomes Foxy and she stops her tantrum dead and holds her hands to Jax’s face in apology before remembering, I’m on camera, and reverts back to ‘yeah how’d you like that’. Oops.
9. London Gurning
Rewind to 2007, a very very bad year for professional reason, for reasons we’ll get into over the next two entries.
Back in June, the first chess moves were being made for what was planned to be the biggest storyline of the year. After a disastrous Vince McMahon appreciation night, Vinny M blew up inside his own limo and seemingly ‘died’.
It was going to span for months, his brother Roderick would appear as an on-screen character, there’d be a struggle for power, Mr. Kennedy would emerge as a major player.
We’ll get to why none of that happened, but just looking back to the night in question, Vince walking to his limo, through the back, where walls of talent are lined up, about 80% of whom I cannot remember their names.
Everyone is SUPER serious, like they know something terrible will happen, the DRAMATIC FOREBODING in all caps, and then there’s Paul London and Brian Kendrick who are smirking up a storm.
Kendrick is trying not to laugh and Paul London is just straight-up beaming with joy while everyone else looks like they’ve caught their willy in a door.
Apparently, Vince was PISSED in all caps at this seeming break of character, but in interviews since, London claims that they did eight takes of the walk and he smiled every time and no one pulled him up on it.
8. Vince Cancels His Own Death
So yeah, the reason why none of it happened.
As most of you probably already know is that a week later, instead of what was supposed to be a Vince McMahon tribute show, WWE aired a Chris Benoit tribute show instead, because they’d learned about the deaths of Chris, his wife Nancy and their son Daniel.
Vince not only broke character but came back to life in order to introduce the show, completely disregarding everything up until that moment, his own descent into madness character arc included.
When real life strikes, obviously storyline has to pushed aside, JR did something similar when Owen Hart died halfway through Over the Edge 1999, but JR was a face commentator so it wasn’t such a violent shift in character.
Not a judgment, just an observation. Anyway, moving onto lighter things…
7. Brock Lolsner
Even though Brock Lesnar seems like the kind of person who probably learned how to laugh from a book, and misunderstood half of what he’d read, it was oddly heartwarming to see him yuk it up with R-Truth before the Royal Rumble.
Brock is in the ring doing his, stone-faced little dance, tiddly tiddly tee, when R Truth arrives to declare himself for the Rumble, challenge Paul Heyman, find out actually it’s brock who’ll be in the Rumble, and then undeclare himself again.
Paul E plays it completely straight, but for some reason, the planets align, and Lesnar just loses composure.
It’s a total break, with the man who is a million sharks squeezed into the body of a German farmhand corpsing like it’s first day at the chuckle hut.
He does then murder R-Truth of course, because, Brock, but it’s disconcerting to see a human side of the beast.
Fun fact, this was part of a bet Truth made with Heyman so see if he could make Brock laugh. Well played, sir.
6. Seth Is So Tough He’s Cute
The Shield are big toughies, look at them. Tough little men, yes they are, yes they are.
For reals, The Shield are WWE most successful project of the decade, and that’s due in no small part to the commitment and dedication of Rollins, Ambrose and Reigns.
It’s clear they were good chums from their chemistry, especially in their backstage promos where they each took it in turns to grimace into a camera that was held almost directly under their nose.
When someone else was talking, their direction is basically, look down the lens, and a look tough, and on the June 14, 2013, episode of Smackdown, while The Shield are cutting a promo being broadcast LIVE to the crowd and the wrestlers in the ring, Seth Rollins goes so tough that he goes full circle and breaks.
While Ambrose is speaking Seth does his best impression of Triple H, realizes how silly he looks, and can’t help but crack a smile, turning away as quick as we can, but we saw you, we got you little man.
Fun fact, this promo happened the same night that The Shield were officially beaten for the first time. Karma’s a son of a bitch.
5. Such A Man
More wrestlers being cute now, goodness the world needs more of that, and Daniel Bryan, the nicest person to ever kick you so hard your lungs become novelty earrings.
On a November 2011 episode of Superstars, which is as dark web as WWE can get, Daniel Bryan was booked for a match with William Regal.
As anyone who’s seen the JBL and Cole show will know, D-Bry and Willy Reegs are good chums, who don’t take themselves too seriously (The Dazzler and Ninja Regal say hello). As such, in again, a truly heartwarming scene, Bryan pranks Regal before their match.
Regal makes his way to the ring to his normally supervillain theme, but as he’s halfway down the ramp, per Bryan’s request, the song suddenly changes to Real Man’s Man, his first theme when he was Steven Regal, a masculine fellow, who wore a hard hat and plaid, and who refuses to eat Quiche, you know like men do.
In front of the cameras and the crowd, Regal and Bryan both break into giggles and oh isn’t wrestling nice sometimes.
4. Kofi Kingston Shoves Pancakes Into Kayfabe’s Mouth, Kayfabe Dies
Kofi Kingston is no stranger to sudden peaks behind wrestling’s fourth wall, the fact that he had dropped his once-Jamaican accent was brought up by DX on live telly, and of course, the whole Randy Orton ‘stoopid’ thing, but then there’s this.
On the November 23, 2015, episode of Raw, emanating from Nashville, Tennessee, the top-tier heel incarnations of New Day came out to insult country music, during which Kofi drops the bomb, “this is me saying this, not my character, country music sucks.”
Like, ok then I guess! CM Punk dropped his pipebomb before challenging for the WWE Title, Roman Reigns and Cena broke the fourth wall to hype a once in a lifetime clash at a pay-per-view, Kofi went there just to dunk on country music, and sometimes, when the night air is still, and you listen extra hard, you can still hear Jim Cornette’s mind-shattering into a thousand pieces at the infraction.
3. Michael Cole Becomes Great For A Night
Moving to a serious place one last time, we mentioned earlier in the list that sometimes it’s up to the broadcast team to relate serious, real-life news to the people watching at home.
On the September 10 2012 episode of Raw, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler suffered a heart attack during a match between Team Hell No and the Prime Time Players, not an unfair reaction to watching Titus O’Neil wrestle.
Michael Cole gets a lot of stick but, as it’s been said before, and it’s absolute right, he was brilliant in the fallout. Not knowing whether his friend was dead or alive, he handled medical updates with grace, sensitivity and utter professionalism.
What makes it all the more remarkable was that up until this point, Cole was had still been in his heel persona, not as obnoxious as he had been the year before in his feud with Lawler, but still vaguely on the side of the heels.
After his masterful handling of the Lawler situation, Cole actually broke character with such success that he turned full babyface again in the weeks that followed.
2. Any time Randy Gets Bored
Genuinely all of the times that Randy Orton broke character could be its own top ten list.
From the time he flipped off the crowd on camera, to the time he did a random star-jump after RKOing Mark Henry, to eating a hot dog whilst selling an attack from wacky Dean Ambrose, corpsing at New Day asking him how many groups he’s been in, asking Sheamus what’s my line during a promo battle, killing one of the Singhs and pulling a whoops face, asking a member of the audience if the show is off the air so he could stop selling, basically older not-giving-a-shit Randy Orton is awesome, and to emphasize that point, here’s him being a genuinely nice fella.
At Survivor Series 2016, Shane McMahon took a hella bump, with Roman plucking him out of a coast to coast with a spear, giving him a whopper concussion.
It’s clear to anyone that something’s wrong, and as medical personnel flock to the ring, the camera picks up Randy Orton moving outside of the ring to the bottom left corner of the screen.
That’s Orton going over to console Shane’s kids, letting them know that their dad is going to be ok. That’s nice. That’s kind.
1. It’s Live, Pal
Is it Sid? Of course it is. The most infamous moment of a wrestler-breaking character in the history of the business, of course it’s Sid.
Now it’s not very nice to call someone dumb, but apparently Sid is on record saying that he has half the brain that I do, so I think it’s ok. It’s the live free for all pre-show to the first-ever In Your House pay-per-view in May 1995.
Diesel is defending the WWF title against the master and ruler of the world, Sid and oh man, it’s lucky this was on the live pre-show, I keep mentioning that it was the LIVE pre-show because apparently no one f**king told Sid, who, when asked how he would address his doubters, stumbles over his words before saying ‘let me do this again’, to which JR responds, it’s live pal, before quick as a flash Sid finishes the promo, JR signing off, ‘there you have it, a man of few words’.
A few, but still too many.
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