The key to success in any avenue of professional wrestling is the illusion of reality, known in the industry as ‘kayfabe’. This illusion is what modern professional wrestling is built on, and nowhere is it more important than when two wrestlers are between the ropes. The difference between a real kick and a worked kick can be a bruise, a scar, or a trip to the hospital the next day. Most of the time, these injuries are accidents. Sometimes, they’re not. Any time a wrestler goes off-script and tries to do real damage to one of their opponents, it is known as a ‘shoot’.
The most common reason for a wrestler taking liberties with their opponents’ safety in the ring is when they feel like their opponent has done the same to them. If you’re in the ring, and accidentally botch a move and hurt your opponent, you can bet that what is known as a ‘receipt’ is coming in the future. A famous example of this is at the 2018 edition of WWE’s Royal Rumble PPV. In a triple threat match involving Braun Strowman and Brock Lesnar, the relatively inexperienced and powerful Strowman delivered an extremely stiff knee to the side of Lesnar’s head. Brock, being an ex-UFC heavyweight champion, took exception and hit Strowman with two full-force punches to the ear, almost making the 6’8″ giant collapse to the ground. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and after a warning to Braun to “slow down!”, the rest of the match went as planned.
Sometimes these receipts don’t end so nicely. During a 1977 New Japan Pro Wrestling match between legendary Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki and strongman The Great Antonio, the unskilled Great Antonio started to not react (a.k.a. ‘no-sell’) to Inoki’s moves, acting as if they didn’t hurt. Inoki was a pioneer of ‘strong-style’ wrestling, a style that featured realistic, stiffer hits and strikes than usual. With Great Antonio treating the match like a joke, and also hitting Inoki with some dangerous strikes to the back of his neck, Inoki snapped and started legitimately slapping and stomping his head into the mat. After Great Antonio was left a bloody unconscious mess on the mat, the referee stepped in and declared Inoki the winner by K.O. The Great Antonio would be entirely blackballed from the Japanese wrestling industry by Inoki, and retired from the sport soon after.
Now these incidents can be understood, if not condoned. After all, if your opponent is being careless with your safety, isn’t it a natural response to remind them how reckless they’re being by protecting yourself? But there are some shooting incidents which are completely indefensible. People who, for completely selfish reasons, have violated the cardinal rule of wrestling: always protect your opponents as they would you.
Probably the most famous incident of physical shooting in wrestling post 2000 occurred at the ECW One Night Stand 2005 PPV. Former ’90s ECW wrestler The Blue Meanie had been invited back to the company, now owned by the WWE, for this show. While he had been gone from the company, he had done an interview where he commented that long-time WWE wrestler John Bradshaw Layfield (a.k.a. ‘JBL’) was a rude bully and had been involved in a number of hazing incidents with newer wrestlers. The ECW and WWE wrestlers were set to have a worked brawl at the end of the show, and the legitimately drunk and belligerent Layfield took it upon himself to teach Meanie a lesson. To prove he wasn’t a rude, violent bully, JBL pulled Meanie’s shirt over his head and smashed him in the face until he was covered in his own blood.
Vince McMahon, ever the opportunist, chose not to fire JBL and would instead use the real life anger between the two as a storyline, setting up a match for the July 7th episode of SmackDown. During the match JBL’s attack would be paid back in kind, when Meanie’s friend Stevie Richards swung a steel chair full force at his head, busting him open and leaving him with a face full of blood as he had done to Meanie a month before. Despite the fact that the two would eventually reconcile a decade later, this still stands as one of the most pointless strokes of real violence in the professional wrestling industry, and the fact that it was tacitly encouraged by the company to make them money is one of the many black marks on the WWE.
All the incidents I have talked about took place in major companies. However, to reach the true bottom of the barrel of the wrestling industry, we have to visit the independent promotions, and there aren’t many as notorious for being disgusting violence-fests as now-defunct IWA Mid-South, run by the aptly named Ian Rotten. The incident I am referring to took place during the 2008 Queen of the Death Matches tournament, and involved the wrestlers Mickie Knuckles and Mike Levy in an inter-gender match.
Mike Levy was a freelancer who had only wrestled a few matches, and as such was very inexperienced in the ring. Mickie Knuckles had been wrestling for around five years at this point, and was much more skilled than her opponent. Rotten had apparently found Levy on a message-board claiming he was a fan of the tournaments, and had flown him in to compete despite knowing the risks. As with all other matches in the tournament, there were weapons laying all around the ring that the fans had brought in themselves.
To set the match up, Levy was standing in the ring claiming he wanted to be in the men’s tournament. Rotten came out and declared that he would be in a tournament, just not the men’s one. After calling him all sorts of homophobic names, Rotten introduced Knuckles, and could be seen giving her instructions as she walked to the ring. The match then started, and there was seemingly a breakdown in communication between the two wrestlers. Due to Levy’s inexperience (which, may I remind you, is something everyone there knew when they hired him to work), he started improperly selling Mickie’s already stiff offence and delivering some careless punches. Mickie responded by fully laying in her attacks, and even headbutted Levy so hard it left a welt on her own head. Eventually, Mickie suplexed Levy onto a ladder in the middle of the ring and pinned him to win the match.
It’s what happens after the match, though, that is truly one of the most awful and horrifying examples of ‘shooting’ in a wrestling ring. Show promotors Devon Moore and Warren “Tank” Hullander rushed to the ring and proceeded to take turns jumping from the corner turnbuckle and full-force stomping Levy’s head into the metal ladder, all the while commentary made reference to American History X and the live crowd whooped and cheered for more. Storm yelled at the bloody and concussed Levy to “learn how to sell” while continually kicking him in his head. Rotten then came out with his teenage son who, after asking his dad for permission, proceeded to beat Levy with a kendo stick.
Rotten and his cronies kept delivering their warped version of justice while screaming into a microphone that Levy deserved his punishment for leaving Knuckles with a scar on her head (which she had inflicted herself by headbutting Levy in the first place) and potentially ruining her upcoming TV appearance with national company Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. In a karmic twist, Knuckles would injure her right femur a month after and would be let go by the company. It’s a miracle Mike Levy was not killed or paralysed in these attacks, and he somehow still wrestles to this day.
Thankfully, ‘shooting’ as a practice seems to have died out in wrestling nowadays, especially in major promotions. With an increased focus on better pay, safety, and more forgiving schedules, the drug-fuelled macho rage of the past and the quiet encouragement from the top brass has turned into an acceptance of what wrestling actually is – a professional environment where two skilled performers come together to put on a performance and still be able to walk away afterwards. With any luck, it’ll stay that way.
