10 Backstage Wrestling Tales From the 1990s Fans Should Know
Michael Hansen 
When it comes to the world of pro wrestling, the 1990s were defined by stiff competition. By the mid-1990s, WWE was in a notorious low period, during which WCW decided to directly compete with a live broadcast, WCW Monday Nitro, going up against Monday Night Raw every single week. Eventually, WWE would recover and hit heights even greater than their 1980s boom, but both promotions would prove to be highly influential in the years that followed.
10 Best Things About Wrestling In The 1990s
There's a reason wrestling fans are so nostalgic when it comes to the 1990s!That’s all required wrestling knowledge, but there are other, smaller stories that fans should know about as well. Let’s take a look at 10 of these backstage tales, which not only concern WWE and WCW but also promotions like ECW and New Japan.
10 Triple H’s Most Devastating Pedigree
The Future Game Spiked A Jobber — Hard
Match | Event | Date | Location |
Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Marty Garner | WWF Superstars | 6/1/1996 | North Charleston, SC |
Long before he was WWE boss and a canonical metalhead, Triple H was the snobby sophisticate Hunter Hearst Helmsley, a gimmick that explains why his finishing move is called The Pedigree. He’s delivered the move countless times, but a simple squash match on an episode of Superstars resulted in one of his most brutal looking Pedigrees ever. According to the unfortunate recipient himself, journeyman wrestler Marty Garner, Garner didn’t know how to take the move and the result looked like Trips had Ganso Bombed the dude into oblivion. There were rumors that Garner sued over the incident, but he claims he did not.
9 The “Sunny Days” Promo
Shawn Michaels Delivers A Personal Jab To Bret Hart On Television
Event | Date |
WWF Raw Is War | 5/19/1997 |
Even setting aside the infamous Montreal Screwjob, Shawn Michaels and Bret “The Hitman” Hart had loads of tension backstage, and that sometimes manifested in kayfabe. In one notorious incident, Michaels cut a promo on Hart where he delivered a coded shot at the Hitman, telling him that his “sunny days were over.” This was basically an accusation that Hart was sleeping with manager Sunny, who at the time was in a relationship with Michaels. Bret Hart denied that anything was going on between the two, claiming they were simply friends and that Hart preferred to borrow her dressing room to change to avoid the rest of the guys.
8 Tension At Collision In Korea
At Least One WCW Wrestler In North Korea Contemplated Murder
Event | Date | Location | Reported Attendance |
Collision In Korea | 4/28/1995-4/29-1995 | Pyongyang, North Korea | 315,000 |
One of the strangest events of the 1990s was 1995’s Collision in Korea, a New Japan/WCW event held in North Korea as a way to further NJPW founder Antonio Inoki’s political aspirations. The overall story of the event is an entertaining one, as the Western wrestlers of WCW found themselves in a country where their freedoms were extremely limited, resulting in a whole lot of tension.
10 Things You Didn't Know About WCW's Infamous Collision In Korea
WCW's Collision in Korea is one of the most infamous special events in wrestling history, and there are a lot of things you didn't know about it.In particular, there was tension between 2 Cold Scorpio and Road Warrior Hawk, with things getting so bad that Scorpio contemplated stealing a metal chopstick so he could stab Hawk. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and the two squashed the beef.
7 How Duke Droese Got Hired By WWE
It Was All Thanks To PWI
Wrestler | PWI Number In 1993 |
Bret Hart | 1 |
Cactus Jack | 53 |
Rob Van Dam | 121 |
Mabel | 290 |
Disco Inferno | 384 |
Duke Droese | 500 |
The aforementioned down period of WWE was known as The New Generation Era, which saw the promotion employing a wide variety of gimmicks in the hope that something would stick. One such gimmick was that of Duke “The Dumpster” Droese, the pro wrestling garbage man. As silly as that was, Droese’s WWE employment has an equally hilarious story behind it. Before arriving in WWE, Droese worked the Florida indies, and in 1993 managed to make Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Top 500 wrestlers at #500. It’s been long rumored that Droese got hired because Vince McMahon claimed he could make a star out of the bottom-ranked guy on that list.
6 William Regal “Shoots” On Goldberg
The Result Was One Of Both Men’s Most Infamous Matches
Match | Event | Date | Location |
Goldberg vs. Lord Steven Regal | WCW Monday Nitro | 2/9/1998 | El Paso, TX |
Outside of the massively influential New World Order faction, one of WCW’s other homegrown phenomena was Goldberg, a football player turned intense wrestler with a legendary winning streak. For over a year, Goldberg ran through every midcard and lower-card talent, but ran into some trouble against Lord Steven Regal (a.k.a. William Regal). It’s unclear if Regal was actually shooting on Goldberg or if the two were experiencing severe communication issues, but either way the result was a strange match in which Regal seems to have Goldberg’s number, making the rising star look surprisingly bad.
5 The Mass Transit Incident
An Underage Wrestler Nearly Died In ECW
Match | Event | Date | Location |
The Gangstas vs. D-Von Dudley & Mass Transit | ECW House Show | 11/23/1996 | Revere, MA |
The third major promotion of the 1990s was Extreme Championship Wrestling, a Philadelphia-based outfit that offered counterprogramming to WWE and WCW thanks to violent matches and a point of view that appealed to the die-hard fans of pro wrestling. ECW had no shortage of infamous incidents, the most unfortunate of which being what’s been termed “The Mass Transit Incident.” Basically, an underage and relatively untrained wrestler — the Mass Transit in question — bluffed his way into being booked on a show, and asked opponent New Jack to cut his forehead rather than blade himself. However, New Jack cut too deep, cutting in an artery, and Mass Transit nearly bled out in the process.
4 Jim Cornette Freaks Out At A Drive Thru
The Incident Was Caught On Videotape
Start Of Wrestling Career | Smoky Mountain Wrestling Run |
1982 | 1991-1995 |
These days, Jim Cornette is simply an internet curmudgeon who pontificates on what he believes is the “good pro wrestling,” but in a bygone era he used to put his money where his mouth was as a promoter. During the period where he was running Smoky Mountain Wrestling, he took part in a cult favorite incident.
10 Things Fans Need To Know About Smoky Mountain Wrestling
Smoky Mountain Wrestling was short-lived, but made a big impact. Here are a few things fans should know about Jim Cornette's promotion.While being videotaped by a wrestler in the backseat of a car, Cornette had taken a group of SMW talent to a Dairy Queen Drive Thru. Their attempt to procure some food went wrong, resulting in Cornette delivering a profanity-laced tirade to the fast food workers that’s become the stuff of legend.
3 The Death Of Young Lion Hiromitsu Gompei
The Famed NJPW Dojo Has A Dark Side
Wrestler | Young Lion | Year |
Kensuke Sasaki | Hiromitsu Gompei | 1995 |
Training as a pro wrestler is hard stuff, but training at the New Japan Dojo is notoriously rough, with rigorous training that not a lot of Western wrestling hopefuls can handle. What happened in 1995, however, exceeded strict training and ventured into straight-up negligence. Specifics of the incident are frustratingly hazy, but allegedly NJPW roster member Kensuke Sasaki was training with Young Lion (trainee) Hiromitsu Gompei in the Dojo, but started getting way too stiff causing the 22-year old to sustain head injuries that he succumbed to days later.
2 Sid Vicious Stabs Arn Anderson With Scissors
The Topic Of Ric Flair Sparked A Very Real Fight
Arn Anderson WCW Runs | Sid Vicious WCW Runs |
1989-2001 | 1989-1991, 1993, 1999-2001 |
While 2 Cold Scorpio ultimately decided not to stab Road Warrior Hawk, Arn Anderson was not so lucky. In 1993, the WCW roster was in England on the first date of a European tour, hanging out in the hotel bar after a long day of travel and wrestling. While discussing WCW’s shortcomings during the period, Sid Vicious decided to trash the veteran Ric Flair, drawing the ire of Flair’s buddy Arn Anderson. Soon enough a brawl ensued, which eventually led to Sid repeatedly stabbing “The Enforcer” with a pair of scissors, not to mention Sid getting fired from WCW.
1 Behind The Scenes At Starrcade ‘97
The Story Behind One Of The Most Frustrating Main Events Of All Time
Match | Event | Date | Location |
Hollywood Hogan vs. Sting | WCW Starrcade | 12/28/1997 | Washington, DC |
It’s always a shame when a wrestling angle doesn’t stick the landing. One of the most infuriating examples of this was the main event of Starrcade ‘97, where an 18-month storyline resulted in Sting challenging Hollywood Hogan for the WCW World Title only for the finish to go horribly wrong, with a supposed fast-count by the ref being counted in a totally normal fashion. While initially Sting was meant to defeat Hogan clean, it was decided that, due to some undisclosed personal issues, Sting wasn’t in the right headspace to believably defeat his opponent. As a result, a different finish was put together, though it remains a mystery why referee Nick Patrick didn’t actually do a fast count on the Stinger.
