Top 5: Wrestling Backstage Incidents!

Because many of wrestling’s craziest moments didn’t happen in front of a camera.

Steve Cook
Aug 9, 2017 · 6 min read

One of the most talked about stories in wrestling lately has been the incident that took place between Karen Jarrett & Braun Strowman at a bar in Nashville after a WWE Raw taping. As the story goes, Karen asked Braun for an autograph for her son, who apparently idolizes Braun. Braun refused, and Karen went on a tirade against him. Once Braun figured out that Karen was Kurt Angle’s ex-wife and that made her son one of Kurt’s many children running around these days, he begged for forgiveness. The begging & the tirade were reportedly quite humorous and alcohol-fueled according to people on the scene, and everybody had a good laugh.

Except Internet wrestling fans, oddly. Braun Strowman fans were especially enraged that their man would be subjected to such abuse from Karen. How dare she take him to task! What an affront to Braun’s wrestling persona! Heck, it probably didn’t happen. I keep waiting for somebody to uncover the security camera footage so people can analyze it Zapruder style. It seems like nobody can enjoy a good backstage wrestling story any more without catching feelings.

Hopefully you readers can, because this column contains my five favorite backstage wrestling stories/disputes. There are many choices to be had, I focused on ones where no harm was really done. That’s why there’s one story involving Sid Vicious while another famous story involving Sid & Arn Anderson was left out. Shoutout to http://www.armpit-wrestling.com/ for refreshing my memory on some of these.

5. Lawler’s Crappy WWF Introduction

Jerry “The King” Lawler. A Southern wrestling legend if there ever was one. The King ruled Memphis & the wrestling promotion there for decades in the ring and behind the scenes. This led to many wrestlers having problems with Lawler, mostly due to the low payoffs people working the territory got. So once Lawler left his backyard and went up north to the World Wrestling Federation, it was open season. Finally, Lawler was just one of the boys and was subject to the type of treatment that other wrestlers got.

The 1993 Royal Rumble match was Lawler’s debut, and if you watch the match you’ll notice something important missing from Lawler’s entrance…his crown! The King didn’t have his headgear with him for one of the few times I’ve seen. Why?

One of the gentlemen that had issue with Lawler from their days together in Memphis took it upon himself to drop a deuce in Jerry’s crown. I don’t know if the King noticed before he put the crown on top of his head, but many people backstage agreed that it was a Fabulous thing to do to Lawler to welcome him to the WWF.

4. Tully Blanchard vs. Manny Fernandez

Tully & Manny had beef going back to their days working for Tully’s father, Joe Blanchard. There was an incident at a diner…allegedly, Tully tried to get with a stripper he & Manny had met earlier in the evening and her boyfriend, a member of a biker gang, didn’t take kindly to this when he walked in on the situation with his friends. Manny intervened to save Tully from a beating and ended up taking one himself, getting stabbed several times by the gang. Tully didn’t see fit to make the save, running off while Manny fended for himself.

Keep in mind that this story comes from Manny Fernandez. Manny’s widely known around the wrestling business as one of the biggest fibbers to lace up a pair of boots. When you stand out in PRO WRESTLING as a liar, that’s really saying something.

There are two stories about what happened between them at the Crockett Cup in 1987. One, told by Manny, is that he nearly killed Tully before the Barbarian intervened. The other story, told by Jim Cornette, is much funnier. They had been cutting promos on each other in the locker room for months. The wrestlers had gotten tired of hearing about it, so nobody planned on breaking anything up. Tully & Manny locked up in a collar & elbow tieup & everybody just looked at them, so they broke the tieup and started yelling at each other again. Classic wrestling fight.

3. Joey Styles vs. JBL

December 2008 featured one of WWE’s annual trips overseas for a Tribute to the Troops. JBL was one of the organizers of the event and loved it more than anything. He also loved bullying people weaker than him, so he took great delight in combining these two endeavors when possible.

Joey Styles was the subject of his wrath on this trip. Styles was working for WWE.com at this point and was covering the event for the website. JBL took great delight in making fun of Joey all week, harrassing him whenever possible. Joey eventually snapped after JBL made some comments after his family and the two had to be separated. They both broke free and Joey caught JBL with a punch to the eye, busting him open. JBL was knocked down and the two men were separated for good.

So yes, Joey Styles beat up JBL.

I wonder if Mauro Ranallo knows that JBL’s beef with him probably had something to do with a previous WWE employee with glasses that announced in a way that appealed to smart wrestling fans. I imagine JBL was trying to right a perceived wrong from nearly a decade ago by harrassing the new nerdy looking guy.

2. Sid Vicious Threatens WCW Wrestlers With A Squeegee

October 1991 saw WWF & WCW hold shows in Atlanta’s Omni on back to back nights. As typically happened when multiple promotions were in the same town, a bunch of the wrestlers got together at the hotel bar. Sid Vicious had recently moved from WCW to the WWF, and started talking crap to some of his old co-workers about how great the WWF was while WCW sucked. Mike Graham, a WCW agent at the time, told Sid to shut up, so Sid made some comments about Graham’s career compared to his.

Brian Pillman was in this grouping as well, and he & Sid had some issues going back to the time Sid nearly killed him at WrestleWar 1991 with a botched powerbomb in a War Games match. Worse yet, Sid refused to work a feud with him afterwards. Sid had talked all this junk and the WCW guys wanted to settle it, but Sid begged off due to a bicep injury. The bandaid on his arm he showed the guys didn’t get much sympathy, so Sid ran off to get a weapon to even the sides…

A squeegee.

Everybody in the bar except poor Sid burst out laughing and no fists were thrown.

1. The Plane Ride From Hell

May 5, 2002 was a date that would live in infamy in WWE for years afterward. The crew was heading back to the United States from the United Kingdom, where they had just done a UK-only PPV event wrapping up a lengthy European tour. The plane was chartered by Vince McMahon and was filled with nothing but wrestling people…and alcohol. Many notable events that could make a list on their own right happened on one plane flight…

  • Michael Hayes punched Bradshaw, attempted to urinate on Linda McMahon, and got his ponytail cut off by X-Pac.
  • Brock Lesnar & Curt Hennig got into a shoot wrestling match and nearly brawled through the emergency door of the airplane.
  • Goldust serenaded his ex-wife Terri Runnels over the plane’s intercom system.
  • Scott Hall got himself fired after excessive drug usage.
  • Ric Flair at the very least flashed multiple flight attendants. He was later sued for going further than that.

Thanks for reading!

Read more at YesWrestling.com
Steve Cook

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I write about sports & entertainment. It’s good times.

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