One of the more somber tales from pro wrestling recently was Jimmy Uso getting a DUI for the third time, and no I don’t have a joke for this bit, here’s hoping Jimmy gets the help he needs.
However, this also created a somewhat morbid fascination in how WWE would react on the following Smackdown, considering a) Jimmy was an integral part of the show’s biggest storyline, and b) WWE have a history of subjecting their roster to cruel and unusual punishments for infractions.
Lana took to Talk Is Jericho recently to reveal how she was taken off TV for months when someone leaked an engagement picture of her and Rusev to TMZ, and while that’s incredibly stupid because wrestling isn’t real, honestly she might have gotten off lucky, because the WWE history books are unfortunately stuffed with cases of stars messing up, and getting their pats on the bottom in front of millions and millions of people.
And then you remember that the Rock called the Lana a wh*re for full minutes. It’s like Judge Judy but with fewer eye rolls and more people have entire Samoan butts pushed in their faces for failing to comply.
I’m Adam hailing from partsFUNknown and these are 10 Times Wrestlers Were Punished By WWE On Air.
10. Take One Of These And Call Me In The Morning
We’ve touched on this in a recent list of Money in the Bank cash-ins but oh man, it’s a f**king heartbreaker.
With the rise of the internet and the transparency that up-to-the-minute news has given WWE’s decision-making, it’s become increasingly rare to see people receive their bollocking in a public forum, again sorry Lana, but like I say, it’s rarer.
However, the biggest ‘and don’t do it again’ that big dub dished out in the last 10 years was against Baron Corbin, who misbehaved so WWE took his toy away, his toy being the Money in the Bank briefcase.
Backstage Corbin had publicly disagreed and argued with a doctor downplaying the consequences of concussions in the NFL, and by chewing him out in front of the boys, Bazza Corbs was seen to be acting disrespectfully, and the ensuing heat saw WWE stripping him of his newly-won case in the most humiliating way possible, losing via rollup to Jinder Mahal in about 6 seconds.
That’s what happens when you stand up for your friend’s brains I guess.
9. Hot Lesbian Punitive Action
Let’s head back in time to the mid-2000s when WWE was really weird and gross and weird, on the October 18th episode of Raw in 2004, Christy Hemme, fresh off of winning the WWE Diva Search was feuding with Carmella, not that Carmella, that Carmella (DeCesare), remember that Carmella?
The two women would be wrestling at Taboo Tuesday in an audience-voted match. Carmella, being the dastardly heel was pushing to do something even tangentially sports-related whereas Christy, the face, said she wouldn’t be happy unless she got to have full sex in the ring or something.
To prove how committed she was, Christy then gave Lilian Garcia just the world’s most awkward kiss, live on air. If Lilian Garcia looked like she hated it, that’s because she did, as the whole thing was a rib on her, to punish her for what WWE perceived to have been partying too hard on the latest European tour.
It’s like your Mum telling you to smoke the whole pack of cigarettes, only it’s kissing someone you don’t want to kiss on tv and it’s really weird.
8. The Butt of the Joke
Continuing on with WWE’s HR department and its weird relationship with its female employees, 2000 was the year that Lita became the third part of the triforce that was Team Extreme, Matt the triforce of wisdom, Jeff, the triforce of plummeting at the ground like a cartoon coyote and Lita, the triforce of cool trousers.
It wasn’t until early 2001 however that Matt and Lita’s real-life relationship was made part of WWE continuity. On the February 19th episode of Raw 2001, Matt saved Lita during her match with Dean Malenko and afterwards the two kissed to a huge pop.
WWE wanted Lita and Matt to repeat the kiss on Smackdown four days later, but apparently Lita refused, makes sense, law of diminishing returns and all that.
However, WWE operates by a different, crueler law than that, with Lita being punished for her disobedience by being stinkface by Rikishi on that smackdown instead, and god lord it was an extra long, extra horrible stinkface at that. Poor Lita it’s a wonder Rikishi doesn’t start choking on her fucking nose. Weird company.
7. No Hugs Allowed
Wrestling isn’t real. This is fine. It doesn’t matter. Sasha and Bayley can stomp each other into protons and then cry and hug afterwards, it doesn’t matter. But apparently in the 90s, oh it mattered super hard.
Wrestlers would be fined if babyfaces shared cars with heels, shared hotels with heels, broke character for even a second, must have been f**king exhausting. In May 1996, Diesel and Razor Ramon were leaving WWE for WCW where they’d go on to have [checks notes] moderate success (obvious sarcasm).
On their last night together, in Madison Square Garden, the two men hugged it out with fellow Kliqmates Triple H and Shawn Michaels in a way that would make Dr. Shelby proud.
However, while Vince had originally signed off on this display of convivial appreciation, because it was an untelevised house show, a member of the crowd managed to capture it on video, and started spreading it around, until it gathered infamy as a relatively rare shattering of kayfabe, known as the curtain call.
Furious, WWE couldn’t punish Big Deez and Razzer, Shawn was the champ, so Triple H carried the can, being booked to lose to Marc Mero on countless house shows and, of course, losing out on being crowned King of the Ring, losing a first-round match to Jake Roberts on a late May episode of Raw.
6. And They Call It Moppy Love
Tell me if this has ever happened to you. You’re at work, your coworker winds you up and you take it a little too far, get into a fight and are called in front of HR.
They tell you, this kind of thing is unprofessional, hand you a piece of janitorial equipment, and then say, cool, now tell everyone in the office that this is your girlfriend. That’s happened to you right, cause it happened to Perry Saturn.
After shoot beating the piss out of a jobber who’d accidentally dropped Perry on his head on an episode of WWE Metal in May 2001, which to be clear IS unprofessional and shouldn’t be condoned, Saturn was punished in the oddest way possible, by being given the world’s most embarrassing gimmick.
Within a week of the incident, he was brutalized by the APA on raw, given severe brain damage, which led him to dress up in a bra and panties, before finally falling in love with a mop that he once tried to use as a weapon.
He called the mop Moppy, and theirs was a brief summer fling, they did everything together, before she was murdered by Raven. And hey, Perry gave it his all, can’t say he didn’t.
5. Royal Humbled
We recently released a list about the hazing culture in WWE and how it was bad. This is an example of hazing culture in WWE. It is bad.
Daniel Puder, won the 2004 Tough Enough competition and I guess bad things just happen to Tough Enough winners at the Royal Rumble. Watch your head, Maven. JEEZ.
In a now-infamous unplanned tale, on the November 4th episode of Smackdown that year, Kurt Angle challenged the tough enough competitors to fight him for reals. Daniel Puder, a man with a fivehead and real-life MMA training, fought him for reals, putting Angle in a shoot kimura lock, which could have caused Kurt serious damage.
As payback for what was seen to be a gross breach of wrestling etiquette, although y’know, don’t do unplanned wrestling spots with MMA fighters I guess, Daniel Puder was entered into the 2005 Royal Rumble, in a spot specifically designed to surround him with some of WWE’s most hazing-happy veterans, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Hardcore Holly, who proceed to leather the kid with chops and it gets real tough to watch.
A rare case of wrestlers court given the green light to go public by the bookers and it’s all sorts of gross.
4. WWE : Weight Watchers Entertainment
Vince McMahon has a muscle fetish and I refuse to say allegedly, I will stand by that statement in court.
He likes marbled beef and if wrestlers don’t conform to his myopic standards of chiseled then he covers them up like a teenager hurriedly stuff his porn collection under his bed. It exists even to this day, with Keith Lee being told to wear a shirt despite being history’s sexiest man.
Sometimes WWE creative has taken it even further, actually punishing stars for perceived poor care of their bodies. Mickie James was submitted to the supremely horrid Piggie James storyline because she was seen as overweight despite being very much not overweight.
But it goes back even further than that, even to Vince’s early years as big boss. In the mid-80s, Adrian Adonis, began to put on weight, and as punishment was stripped of his badass biker gimmick and was instead repackaged as Adorable Adrian Adonis, a large effiminate man who used gay panic and terrible make-up blending as mind games.
It’s a tale with a really sad end. After being cut from WWE shortly after Mania 3, Adonis went to Japan and over the next year lost 100 pounds, gearing up for a return to the big dub. Before he could make that return however, he died in a car crash in 1988, age 34.
3. RVD Was Going To Be A Double Champ, But Then He Got High
Health-wise weed isn’t as bad for you as most legal drugs, but it sure is deadly to a push.
In 2013, shortly before a world championship match at Mania 29 that he was tipped to win, Jack Swagger was pulled over with pot in his car, he lost at Mania and slipped down the card.
A more significant career derailment happened to Ronald Van Donald after one of the most infamous and ill-timed arrests in WWE talent history. Going into July 1st 2006, hot off the One Night Stand pay-per-view, RVD was WWE and ECW champion, proverbially riding high.
But then, in fine Afroman tradition, Van Dam was busted by the cops, for literally riding high. After being pulled over for speeding in a car with Sabu, cops searched the vehicle and found various illegal drugs including 18 grams of marijuana.
RVD was suspended for 30 days after going on a brief punishment tour of Raw and ECW, where he wrestled back-to-back matches for the WWE and ECW championships and was pinned by Edge and Extreme Big Show respectively.
2. It Spells GOONNEE
Very few people extort Vince McMahon for money and don’t suffer some sort of terrible consequences.
Step right up J E double F J A double R E Double T, who famously managed to bilk big Vince for hundreds of thousands of dollars by being Intercontinental Champion, letting his contract expire, then refusing to drop the belt at No Mercy 1999 before he jumped to WCW, unless Vince got out the checkbook.
First of all, good con, Danny Ocean would be proud, second, he’s got no problems as long as WCW never goes out of business. Oh dear.
On March 26th 2001, which was the blockbuster final episode of WCW Nitro after being bought by WWE, Vince held a special simulcast episode of Raw, watching both shows from the Monday Night Wars side by side.
He opened the show by watching footage of Jeff Jarrett, saying that after tonight he’d be spelling his name Captial G, Double O, Double N, Double E, and I don’t care what you say, Vince, that spells GOONEE goddammit.
18 months after he crossed the boss, Jarrett was fired live on TV, which just goes to show that revenge is a dish best served raw.
1. The Screwjobs
Because never forget that, despite the Montreal Screwjob being one of the most significant moments in all of wrestling, the axis point on which the Monday night wars shifted, it was still a rerun.
Vince has presided over not one, but two major screwjobs as the chairman of the WWE, serving otherwise loyal talent a jagged slice of retribution for not doing business by his book.
Bret Hart refused to drop the belt to Shawn in Canada at the 1997 Survivor Series, so Vince rang the bell on him, stripped him of the title and sent him on his way with all the best for his future endeavors.
It’s a very very VERY well-known story. Slightly less well-known, but equally callous, was the screwing of Wendi Richter. Richter was in her second reign as WWF Women’s Champion after beating Leilani Kai at the first-ever WrestleMania, when she got into a dispute with Vince.
The Chairman claims that Richter was refusing to sign a new contract, Richter claims that she was still under contract, but that she wanted to renegotiate it for a better per-match payout and royalties from her work on the short-lived Hulk Hogan’s Rock n Wrestling cartoon.
Vince thought that was asking too much and set a plan in motion to remove the title from Richter. On November 25, 1985, at a filmed event at Madison Square Garden, Richter battled The Spider, aka Fabulous Moolah in a mask.
Moolah caught Wendi in a small package, Richter kicked out, but much to the confusion of Monsoon and Ventura, the ref counted the three and awarded the belt to Moolah before Wendi unmasked her, tried to keep the match going, before the whole thing fell apart in an awkward mess, with Moolah grabbing the belt and leaving under guard protection, leaving Wendi alone in the ring, looking furiously down the camera, right into Vince’s soul.
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