Wrestlers Who Caused Injuries That Nearly Ruined Careers

It's been well-documented over the years just how dangerous professional wrestling really is. For every person who tries to use the classic argument of "wrestling is fake," there is another person who has experienced just how real the business can be. After all, WWE doesn't play the "don't try this at home" video package on their TV shows for a laugh. They play it because they know how one mistake can change the course of someone's life forever.

Careers have been ended in an instant, lives have even been taken due to freak accidents, and considering that there is an entire documentary series called "Dark Side of the Ring" that has run for six seasons and shows no signs of slowing down, it's safe to say that professional wrestling is an industry that will chew people up and spit them out just as quickly.

However, there are some wrestlers, a few of which are still working today, who have came within millimeters of having their careers ended, but by the grace of whatever god they believe in, or simply by dumb luck, they have been able to come back from serious injuries and not only live to tell the tale, but continue to have successful careers afterwards.

That is what we are going to be talking about today. The wrestlers who have almost had their careers ended through major injuries, and in particular, the wrestlers who have caused said injuries. Whether it was by accident, or in some cases on purpose, these performers are amongst the most popular of their respected eras, but for as professional as they might be, even they are guilty of potentially taking someone's career away from them. Here are just some of the wrestlers who caused injuries that nearly ruined their careers.

Perhaps the most famous example of a wrestler injuring someone to the point where they almost took away their ability to walk, Owen Hart was beloved by both the fans and the people that he worked with in the ring due to how good he was. A constant professional whose legacy still lives on to this day, with many people citing him as an inspiration and influence on their own in-ring styles, making him one of the most important wrestlers of his era in the process. However, for as good as Hart was, he was also the reason why Stone Cold Steve Austin's career ended far before it was supposed to.

At the 1997 WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view, Hart and Austin's match for the WWE Intercontinental Championship took a scary turn when Hart hit a Tombstone Piledriver to Austin. The only difference between what Hart did and what fans would expect from someone like The Undertaker or Kane is that instead of dropping to his knees, he would land a sit-out variant, giving Austin no time to prepare himself, which ultimately led to Austin being dropped directly on his head, breaking his neck and temporarily paralyzing him in the process.

By some miracle, Austin finished the match but was never the same, and while he was able to power through due to his popularity and importance to the WWE product at the time, Austin would eventually have neck surgery in 1999, before retiring from wrestling in 2003. Austin was also offended at the fact that Hart only ever called him once to apologize, and didn't show too much sympathy for causing the injury, causing Austin and Hart's relationship to sour, something that was never rectified as Hart would tragically pass away at the 1999 Over The Edge pay-per-view. 

The Undertaker is perhaps the most respected man to have ever stepped foot in a WWE ring, working for the company for 30 uninterrupted years before retiring in 2020. The Deadman was known for being a little snug in the ring when the time called for it, but he never went out of his way to intentionally hurt anyone, With that said, one freak accident that The Undertaker was involved in almost led to the career of one of WWE's most important Superstars being ended.

At the 1998 Royal Rumble, The Undertaker was wrestling Shawn Michaels for the WWE Championship in a casket match, with the large wooden casket being situated next to the ring. During the match, The Deadman gave a backdrop to Michaels, who went over the top rope and looked to clear the casket on the way down. However, Michaels clipped the casket with his lower back, causing an injury that would become so severe that The Heartbreak Kid was told by doctors that he would never wrestle again as he had herniated two discs and crushed a third.

The Undertaker was never blamed for causing Michaels to get hurt, with Michaels even stating in an interview back in 2000 that his back was causing him a lot of pain before the match, and clipping the casket was simply the final straw that his body could take. The Heartbreak Kid also noted that wrestling an already injured Steve Austin at WrestleMania 14 didn't help matters, and he would step away from WWE immediately after. Michaels would eventually return to action in 2002, having another eight years in the ring before retiring in 2010 after losing a Streak vs. Career match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania 26. Just don't mention Crown Jewel 2018 to anyone.

Unprotected chair shots have been outlawed in most companies around the world, and while you will still have the occasional rogue chair hit, those chairs have either been gimmicked, shaved down, or weren't strong enough to be used as a chair in the first place. However, back in 1999, the WWE's famed "Attitude Era" was full of grown men being given massive concussions by taking a steel chair to the head, and The Rock was someone who could swing a chair.

At the 1999 Royal Rumble, The Rock challenged Mick "Mankind" Foley for the WWE Championship in an I Quit match, with The People's Champion walking away victorious. It's a match that has become infamous for many people given how it ended, with The Rock handcuffing Foley's hands behind his back, and giving him nearly a dozen unprotected chair shots to the head, with the final one being to the back of Foley's head.

For a man who has literally won a tournament called "The King of the Deathmatch," even Foley thought that The Rock went a bit too far with the chair shots, and as much as Foley was willing to do it in order to get "The People's Champion" over as a heel, he wasn't happy about taking that amount of punishment in front of his family, who were sitting at ringside. In short, The Rock didn't technically cause any substantial injuries that would put Foley on the shelf as the two men would continue to feud up until WrestleMania 15. With that said, this was one of the final times where Foley took an enormous amount of punishment before trying to retire just over a year later, a retirement that would stick for around four years before Foley started making sporadic appearances in WWE beginning in 2004.

Stepping away from WWE momentarily as we turn our attention to the land of extreme. For a company that literally had "blood and guts" written on the ring skirt, some of the most serious injuries that happened in ECW were complete accidents, and in the case of Dean Malenko and 2 Cold Scorpio, they almost ended the career of someone who would go on to be an ECW legend with a standard wrestling move.

In the summer of 1995, Malenko and Scorpio were wrestling Taz and Eddie Guerrero at an ECW live event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Malenko and Scorpio would deliver a Spike Piledriver to Taz in the corner of the ring. Taz immediately knew something was wrong and managed to tag Guerrero into the match, who would finish the match as "The Human Suplex Machine" was in agony on the apron, but didn't exactly know what was wrong with himself.

Once the event was over, Taz, with the help of Tommy Dreamer, walked to the nearest hospital to get himself checked out, and according to Dreamer on "The Rise and Fall of ECW" documentary, the doctor was in complete shock at the fact that Taz had simply walked himself into the emergency room, stating that there was no way he could have done that as his test results showed that Taz had broken his neck.

Taz has since taken the blame for the move going wrong, stating that he didn't give himself enough time to prepare for the move, and that he has never held any ill feelings towards Malenko and Scorpio. After recovering from the injury, Taz would go on to conquer ECW as the company's World Heavyweight Champion, but would slowly transition into retirement due to problems with his neck.

Seth Rollins had a very eventful few years after breaking away from The Shield in 2014. He became the crown jewel of The Authority, he was the only man up to that point to hold the WWE World Heavyweight and WWE United States Championships simultaneously, and only had his momentum stopped by his own injury that happened at a live event at the end of 2015. However, there was one particular trend that followed Rollins around during this time, that being that he was rather unsafe to work with due to how many people he had inadvertently injured.

Rollins would famously break John Cena's nose during a match on "WWE Raw," an injury that went viral for how graphic it was, but he would make a full recovery in no time for the simple fact that he's John Cena, and he can never be kept on the shelf for too long. At SummerSlam 2016, Rollins powerbombed Finn Balor into the barricade at the side of the ring, leading to Balor tearing his shoulder and missing six months of action, but in between these two injuries, a much scarier moment took place.

At the Night of Champions pay-per-view in 2015, Rollins faced Sting in the main event, with Rollins hitting his trademark Buckle Bomb to "The Icon." Shortly afterward it was clear something wasn't right as Sting began stumbling and collapsing during his moves. This was due to Sting suffering a serious neck injury as a result of the Buckle Bomb, an injury that would force Sting into retirement. Rollins was reportedly distraught at the idea of potentially ending Sting's career, but "The Icon" has never blamed Rollins for what happened as he simply saw it as a freak accident from which he would eventually make a full recovery.

Jeff Hardy is one of the most popular WWE Superstars of all time due to his unique look, his love of ladders, and his ability to fly off of said ladders. It's almost impressive that over the years, Hardy has never had any serious injuries during a ladder or TLC match, but on one night in 2006, he would permanently alter the career, and face, of a fellow WWE Superstar.

At Armageddon 2006, Jeff and his brother Matt Hardy joined MNM, the team of Joey Mercury and Johnny Nitro, in making the originally scheduled WWE Tag Team Championship match between the champions Paul London and Brian Kendrick, and the challengers William Regal and Dave Taylor, a four-way ladder match. During the match, Matt held MNM's faces over a ladder that was set up like a Teeter Totter, which sprung up and knocked Mercury and Nitro down when Jeff landed on the ladder. Nitro walked away virtually unharmed, but Mercury was the opposite

Mercury's face virtually exploded as the edge of the ladder legitimately hit him in the face, breaking his nose and orbital bone, which required him to get over 30 stitches after the event but opted to not have surgery. However, this would worsen the drug dependency Mercury had been struggling with since he was 15, and he was released by WWE three months after his injury. 

Mercury almost lost his house following his release but received help from former WWE Champion CM Punk. The good fortune put Mercury on the road to recovery, resulting in him becoming sober and being rehired by WWE in 2010 in the role of a producer and later an on-screen character as part of The Authority, before departing again in 2017.

The funny thing about wrestling is that some moves that look extremely dangerous to the naked eye can often be some of the safest to perform and take, while the simplest of moves can be the ones to legitimately injure someone, or even end someone's career. When someone looks at AJ Styles performing the Styles Clash, they might think that it's a fairly simple move to take and perform as Styles is just falling forward while holding on to another performer. However, the Styles Clash has earned a reputation as being one of the most dangerous moves in wrestling for the sole fact that it has injured a number of people.

In order to take the move, the wrestler who is being held upside down needs to tilt their head back as far as possible. If they do the opposite and tuck their chin, they will have all of their own body weight, and Styles himself, come down on their neck. The likes of Roderick Strong, James Ellsworth, Corey Graves, and Frankie Kazarian all made this error but managed to escape with relatively no problems. However, two men have had their necks broken taking the move.

Former WWE Superstar Yoshitatsu broke his neck taking the move from Styles at the 2014 Power Struggle event in NJPW, and would miss nearly 18 months of action, but would eventually make a full recovery. However, British wrestler Lionheart had his neck broken in the Styles Clash during a match in 2014, causing him to miss a year of action, despite being told by doctors that he would never walk again. Lionheart even wrote a letter to Styles himself asking him to stop using the move given how dangerous it was, but Styles will still use it sporadically to this day. Lionheart died in 2019.

Despite looking like he could gorilla press the entire solar system, Brock Lesnar has actually earned the reputation of being one of the safest workers in WWE history, despite the fact that he has been permitted to cave in the skulls of both Randy Orton and Roman Reigns over the years. With that said, his initial run with WWE between 2002 and 2004 saw Lesnar break someone's neck on three separate occasions.

Amazingly, two of those occasions happened with Kurt Angle, a man who has a famously injured neck as he won an Olympic Gold Medal in 1996 while his neck was still broken. Lesnar broke Angle's neck by ramming him into the turnbuckle during a match, causing Angle's head to snap sideways and crack his neck, while the other time came when he hit Angle on the top of the head with a steel chair on an episode of "WWE SmackDown," breaking his neck even further.

The other occasion, and the far more infamous one of the three, came on an episode of "SmackDown" in 2002 when Lesnar wrestled Hardcore Holly. Lesnar got Holly up for a Powerbomb, but after Holly didn't go all the way up, Lesnar simply dropped Holly on the top of his neck, breaking it instantly. Holly would go on to miss a year of action, and while Holly would make a full recovery and return to WWE in 2003, many people wondered if Lesnar did the move on purpose to teach Holly a lesson for potentially sandbagging him. This wasn't the case as Holly would later reveal in a 2018 interview that he and Lesnar are still good friends, the timing of the move was off for both men and Lesnar would check in on him regularly after his surgery.

Bringing everything full circle is a moment that not many people know about due to what happened to Steve Austin in his match with Owen Hart, but many years earlier, Austin did something eerily similar to what Hart did to him.

In September 1992, Austin challenged Masahiro Chono for the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship at a New Japan Pro Wrestling event in Yokohama, Japan. Chono was one of the biggest stars in NJPW at the time, while Austin had established himself as one of the best wrestlers on the WCW roster at that time, making this first-time-ever match a must-see showdown. In the closing stages, Chono went for a Tombstone Piledriver, but Austin countered it with one of his own, and before Chono could get himself a moment to prepare himself, Austin sat down to deliver the move instead of dropping to his knees, causing Chono's head to hit the canvas and breaking his neck upon impact.

If you put Austin's move on Chono, and Hart's move on Austin next to each other, it is scarily similar and both ended up with the same result. Fortunately, Chono was able to finish the match, and because he is tougher than most wrestlers put together, he barely missed any action and would continue wrestling for NJPW in the months and years after the match with Austin. However, when Chono would eventually win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in 1998, he would be forced to vacate the title as his neck issues that had gone untreated for so long had caught up to him. While Austin's career had decades taken off it due to his neck problems, Chono would wrestle regularly until 2014, and after successful spinal stenosis surgery, he officially announced his retirement in February 2023.