Was Lex Luger actually supposed to win the WWE Title at WrestleMania 10 instead of Bret Hart?
Rumors and professional wrestling go hand in hand. With every week that passes by, dozens of rumors get spread about certain wrestlers, certain promoters, certain shows, certain storylines, and so on and so on. Most of the time a good majority of these rumors quickly get dispelled and are forgotten or considered a joke. Yet there are still some rumors that not only continue to circulate, but are still believed by a large group of wrestling fans, mostly the kind who somehow find a way to make everything they heard connect into one big conspiracy theory.
The following are just twelve ridiculous rumors that have been made in professional wrestling that either are not true or there’s not enough evidence to prove that there any of the rumors are factual. You may have heard of most of these rumors already, while a couple of them might be brand new to you. Whether you’re caught up on your wrestling gossip, or you’re looking to dig deeper into the dirt sheets until you’re covered in gunk and muck, get ready to see some head scratching rumors that will make you wonder how the heck such gossip got started in the first place.
10. Hogan/Zeus At WrestleMania 6
Any No Holds Barred fans out there? No, not the match type, but the 1989 “classic” that starred Hulk Hogan and Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister as the antagonist Zeus. It was Hogan’s major break into Hollywood, and needless to say it was pretty much a critical flop. At the time it came out there was plenty of heavy promotion for it in the WWE, and Vince McMahon was quick to inform the fans to go see the big movie. Then to really beat upon a dying horse, Zeus was brought into WWE to feud with Hogan.
Eventually Lister left the company and Hogan went on to have a big match with The Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania 6. However, years later rumors started to spread that Hogan was originally meant to take on Zeus at WrestleMania 6, not Warrior. The idea was to take the final scene of No Holds Barred and bring it to WWE programming. If the movie had been a huge success, maybe there would have been more of a possibility of that match happening, but as far as most people are concerned Hogan was always meant to take on Warrior no matter what.
9. The HBK/Tommy Lee Fight
In the 90s, Shawn Michaels had a bit of an attitude problem. There have been hundreds of stories about Shawn’s behavior backstage. He was often considered to be rude to others, egotistical, and only had him and his friends propelled to the top of the ladder with everyone else eating their dust. Also included in these stories are the many backstage fights that Shawn had been a part of. One of these fights involved Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. The brawl apparently took place at WrestleMania 11. At the time, Diesel and Shawn Michaels were facing each other for the WWE Championship and Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee’s girlfriend back then, escorted Diesel to his match.
According to backstage gossip, Michaels was hitting on Anderson before the match started, and a jealous Tommy Lee confronted Shawn about it and attacked him from behind. Sid Vicious, who was also booked at the show, pinned Lee against the wall in order to stop him from beating on Michaels. Some say that there was something going on between Michaels and Anderson while others believe that it was a planted story just to get media attention. Unless Sid or Shawn decide to talk about what really happened that night, this one is also most likely just another rumor spreading like wildfire.
8. Vince McMahon Wanted To Buy Newcastle United
Vince McMahon is always thinking big. In fact there have been times where Vince has tried to expand WWE beyond professional wrestling itself. Once upon a time Vince was interested in the WWE having its own bodybuilding league, and another time he tried to take over the world of American football with the XFL. Both of those dreams died early on, and since then Vince has kept himself in the realm of professional wrestling. But recent rumors have been circulating that Vince may now be trying to target the European demographic by purchasing Newcastle United.
Newcastle United is an English professional football club based in Newcastle upon Tyne. For Vince, England is still an untapped market for professional wrestling. While the international tours WWE goes on do great ticket sales, there’s still a much bigger audience to be won, and if Vince bids on Newcastle United and wins, he could find himself in control of a sporting club that opens the doors to an even bigger WWE Universe. However, at the moment Vince is having some financial woes, both professionally and personally, and making a purchase as big as Newcastle United is certainly not going to be high on his list of priorities anytime soon.
7. Jerry Lawler Hated ECW
“How can this be a rumor? Lawler used to hate on ECW for years!” you might be saying. In truth, Lawler never hated ECW. It was all just an act that show once again just how awesome Jerry Lawler is at fooling an entire fanbase. When ECW “invaded” WWE back in the mid 90s, Lawler was at the forefront of those who opposed Heyman and his “untalented” wrestlers. Lawler called them “Extremely Crappy Wrestling” and every time he talked about them he looked like his head was about to explode from rage and anger. Many believed that it had to be real emotions.
“How can this be a rumor? Lawler used to hate on ECW for years!” you might be saying. In truth, Lawler never hated ECW. It was all just an act that show once again just how awesome Jerry Lawler is at fooling an entire fanbase. When ECW “invaded” WWE back in the mid 90s, Lawler was at the forefront of those who opposed Heyman and his “untalented” wrestlers. Lawler called them “Extremely Crappy Wrestling” and every time he talked about them he looked like his head was about to explode from rage and anger. Many believed that it had to be real emotions.
“The appearance that I didn’t like ECW and everything is hopefully attributed to my ability to sell what we’re trying to do on the air. A lot of people think I really, absolutely hated ECW, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. If you look back, you’ll see that I was the only one who went and worked with ECW from the WWF. I went and worked their pay-per-views. You don’t work on someone’s pay-per-view and wrestle on their show if there’s genuine bad feelings between the two. I was always… I won’t say a big fan, because I was down in Memphis and I didn’t really get to see firsthand all they were doing. I heard about it. I knew. Because we were trying to keep the Memphis Territory afloat, I knew the struggles and hardships these guys were going through.”
6. Vince McMahon: United States President?
Once more we find Vince McMahon the victim of yet another rumor. This time instead of owning another company, it looks like Mr. McMahon is trying to make himself the leader of the free world! Back in 2010, during the time when his wife Linda was running for Senator of Connecticut, rumors began to grow that maybe Vince was interested in having his own political campaign. Many agreed that he would go so far as to try and become the next President of the United States. There was even a Raw segment in which Vince, upon waking up from a kayfabe coma (it’s a long story,) announced that he planned on running for President.
It was a joke segment that turned out to be a dream sequence, but there were still a lot of people who were convinced that Vince had every intention of running for office and potentially being elected by the year 2016.There were mock interviews, reports from “credible source” and plenty of discussions at every water cooler around the world about Vince running for office, and it was very similar to the time when Hulk Hogan announced that he was going to run for president on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Since then, the rumor of Vince running the oval office has slowed to a crawl, and it’s very unlikely that Vince is going to want to spend another 100 million dollars on another campaign.
5. Hogan’s WrestleMania IX Black Eye
At WrestleMania IX, Hulk Hogan not only competed in a tag match with Brutus Beefcake against the tag team champions Money Inc, but he also found himself in an impromptu WWE Championship match where he managed to win the WWE Championship for a stunning fifth time. One very noticeable feature on Hogan when he came out for both matches is that he had a black eye that looked like he was punched in the face.
The gossip that made its way all around the back and even found its way into a few of the more mainstream reporting site is that Randy Savage was the one who gave Hogan the black eye. The injury was supposedly caused when Savage, after getting into an argument with Hogan backstage over him being the cause for his recently divorce with Miss Elizabeth, gave him a solid punch right in the eye before the show started. As a result, Hogan had a big shiner on his face that couldn’t be hidden by makeup.
The truth of the matter is that Hogan’s eye injury was a result of a Jet Ski accident that occurred while he was hanging out with Brutus and trying out new water skis. There was no wild altercation between Hogan and Savage, but their rivalry over the years helped push some legitimacy into the rumor for a number of years.
4. There Were Two Ultimate Warriors
Here we go again with the doppelganger routine. Only this time there wasn’t two Warriors at once, but rather a new Warrior to replace the original who had “died” on numerous occasions throughout the 80s and 90s. These rumors were mostly based on how physically different Warrior looked from his days in WCCW to his time in WWE. Also during his hiatus from WWE, Warrior lost a bit of mass making everyone believe that the Ultimate Warrior character was being played by somebody else. Some speculate that Kevin Von Erik was portraying Warrior.
Fortunately, none of that turned out to be true. There has always been just one Ultimate Warrior in professional wrestling, and his name was Jim Hellwig before legally changing it to Warrior. While putting on face paint and tassels might make anyone look like Warrior, only one person could ever have the energy and ability to captivate a wrestling audience for so many years.
3. Big Show Is The Son Of Andre The Giant
As soon as WCW managed to grab hold of Paul Wight and throw him into the world of professional wrestling as The Giant, the comparisons were already being made to Andre the Giant. In fact, WCW went so far as to say that The Giant was in fact the son of Andre the Giant. Throughout the feud with Hulk Hogan, comparisons would be made between Giant and Andre, and Hogan even said he was going to slam Giant just like he did to his dad Andre.
For whatever reason, people started believing that The Giant was in fact Andre’s son. Maybe it was because Paul was just so big that it only made sense for Andre to be his dad, or maybe the WCW commentators were very good as convincing impressionable kids that it was true. For the record, Paul Wright and Andre have no relation to each other besides the fact that they both had gigantism. Fortunately for Wight the doctors were able to perform successful surgery on his pituitary gland to stop the growth.
2. Randy Orton’s Crappy Situation
Just about everybody has heard this rumor at one point or another. The tradition of wrestlers pooping into certain objects has been carried on for a number of years, and one of the more recent accusations has been toward Randy Orton when he was accused of releasing his bowels over the purse of a diva by the name of Rochelle Loewen. Nobody remembers her anymore, but for a brief stint she had performed in WWE as a member of the Smackdown brand. Other than a couple taped segments and a couple in ring appearances, Loewen hardly made much of an impact and soon left the company.
Somehow within that short time span, Orton found the time to give Rochelle a good ribbing before she left. Loewen herself has stated that what she found in her purse was not human fecal matter, but rather a large glob of tanner and baby oil. It’s unknown how the incident changed from tanner and baby oil to poop, but the rumor continues to grow as a dark cloud over Randy Orton’s head. What a crappy situation to be in.
1. Lex Luger’s Missed Title Opportunity
Around the time of WrestleMania 10, Lex Luger and Bret Hart were the two biggest faces in the company, and both of them had legitimate claim to face WWE Champion Yokozuna at WrestleMania X when both men won the Royal Rumble at the same time. When Luger got his chance, he defeated the big man but was unable to win the championship. Bret Hart then had his turn, and the rest is history. After Luger had been pushed for so long, many believed that a WWE Championship run was inevitable. He was practically the new generation of Hulk Hogan, and everyone knows Vince likes his wrestlers big and muscular. Bret winning was a shock, and with shock comes confusion, anger, and the birth of many wild rumors and speculations as to why Luger lost.
One of the big rumors was that the night before WrestleMania, Luger was at a bar bragging to everyone about how he was going to win the match and become the new champion. When Vince heard about this, he decided to punish Luger’s blabbing by changing the results at the last minute and having Bret win at the end of the night instead of Luger. It’s not unusual for Vince to make sudden changes to results, but for the main event at WrestleMania it would have been highly unprecedented as WrestleMania is a show that gets planned months in advance. Furthermore, in an interview with Luger that took place in 2009 over at ClubWWI, Luger knew that he wasn’t going to win the title months before WrestleMania X:
“To be honest with you, I knew maybe a few months before WrestleMania because my family had never been to an event. So I asked (The WWF) for tickets to WrestleMania and Vince was upset. He called me into his office, this is months and months before WrestleMania, and he goes, “Lex, you know, you’re not going to be winning the belt at WrestleMania.” And my ex-wife Peggy had some really good friends out of New York. Their family had kids the same age as my kids, so I wanted them there no matter what. So I said, “Vince, I just want them to go to the event with their friends. It doesn’t matter. That doesn’t have anything to do with me wanting tickets.” So he let me know months out that I was not going to be World Champion at WrestleMania because he was worried about me flying my whole family in to celebrate me winning the title and he was courteous enough to tell me that I wasn’t winning the belt. So I knew months out.”
