People like to think that wrestling is easily choreographed to the point where every action inside the ring is "fake." But when things go wrong in a wrestling match, it's anything but fake. Wrestlers put their bodies on the line every time they step into the ring and even highly experienced professionals can have a match with a bad botch, or error performing a move.
Every wrestling company has had its fair share of terrifying botches, including the biggest in the world, WWE. Here are five of the scariest botches that took place during an in-ring match in WWE's history.
Botched Piledriver Breaks Stone Cold's Neck
Owen Hart is one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots. But a big reason why WWE banned the piledriver (outside of exceptions for The Undertaker and Kane) was because even he couldn't protect Stone Cold Steve Austin at SummerSlam 1997.
Austin had feuded with The Hart Foundation as a rising star throughout 1997 and was booked to win his first WWF singles title over Owen Hart at SummerSlam. The piledriver had been one of Hart's signature maneuvers throughout his career, but this time Austin wasn't protected well enough and his neck was broken. Austin improvised a roll up pin to win the match and the title, but the course of his career had been significantly altered.
Despite the devastating injury, Stone Cold still went on to have one of the greatest main event runs in the history of the business. However, his underrated in-ring skills had to be adjusted to account for his neck injury, and in less than six years Austin was done wrestling for good. Like Mickey Mantle, Austin's star shone bright, but injuries still make him one of the biggest "What If"s in history.
Darren Drozdov's Tragic Paralysis
Arguably the most tragic in-ring botch in WWE history took place during a Smackdown taping on October 5, 1999 in a match between Darren Drozdov and D'Lo Brown. When Brown attempted his signature running powerbomb, he couldn't get a proper grip on Droz and Droz didn't properly jump up to aid the move. Droz landed on his head and fractured two vertebrae in his neck, which left him quadriplegic. The match itself was never aired.
Drozdov has remained an inspirational figure since his injury. He became a writer for WWE magazine and has since regained movement in his arms and upper body. Drozdov has never held any animosity towards Brown, as he discussed in an appearance in Season Two of Dark Side of the Ring.
Brock's Botched Shooting Star Press
Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle are two of the greatest athletes to ever step in a WWE ring. Their WWE championship match was picked as the WrestleMania XIX main event because the company knew it was a dream match capable of being a classic. This is why it's shocking to think that the most memorable moment of their match was Brock Lesnar's near-disastrous attempt at a shooting star press.
Having pulled off the move a few times in OVW, Lesnar decided to debut the shooting star press in the WWE to finish off his mat classic with Angle. Angle and head writer Brian Gerwirtz actually talked Lesnar into using it for the special occasion and Lesnar bought in. The only problems were that Angle was too far away from the ring post and Lesnar did not fully rotate his body, leading him to land on his head and neck. What was supposed to be a special WrestleMania moment turned into a terrifying scare.
Miraculously, Lesnar and Angle managed to finish the match and award the young Beast the WWE title, but Lesnar was too concussed to celebrate fully.
Joey Mercury Injures His Face On A Ladder
While it's been overshadowed by John Morrison's successful tag-team run with The Miz, back when Morrison was still known as Johnny Nitro, his MNM stable featuring Melina and Joey Mercury was an underrated tag team during the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, the most famous moment in the tag team's history took place in an impromptu four way tag team ladder match at Armageddon in 2006.
In a seesaw spot between MNM and The Hardy Boyz, Jeff Hardy jumped off the top rope to push the ladder up towards Nitro and Mercury's faces. However the ladder accidentally broke Mercury's nose and orbital bone, requiring 15 stitches. Morrison/Nitro recalled the accident in WWE Magazine, saying "I happened to be looking up, so it hit me in the throat. But Mercury was looking straight at it and it hit him square in the nose and the orbital bone. It really could have been any one of us. I was just lucky that the ladder hit him first."
The injury became so notorious that it became part of a big angle between MNM and The Hardy Boyz afterwards.
Goldberg Nearly Breaks Undertaker's Neck
"I was two inches away from making my wife a widow and my kids fatherless." That revealing line by The Undertaker in The Last Ride sums up how disastrous his Super Showdown match with Goldberg was.
While both The Undertaker and Goldberg were well into their fifties for this dream match, no one expected things to g0 down that horribly. Goldberg busted his head open before the match even began (allegedly headbutting the dressing room wall to psych himself up) and did it again to the ring post. The Deadman was unable to hang onto Goldberg for the tombstone piledriver. But the scariest moment of this match was Goldberg's attempted jackhammer to the near three hundred pound Phenom that fell short.
Goldberg was only inches away from breaking Undertaker's neck. Thankfully, The Undertaker escaped without injury was able to finish the match with a choke slam -- but the dejected look on his face immediately afterwards said it all.