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A wrestler’s entrance is one of the most important parts of their overall presentation. From the music that’s played to the way they walk down to the ring, all of these subtleties play a big role in selling a wrestler to the audience watching. Thus, a wrestler’s entrance needs to be as flawless as every other aspect of their persona.
But as with other parts of life, things don’t always go as planned during a wrestler’s entrance. In some cases, a wrestler’s entrance gets screwed up completely, which causes irreparable damage to their image.
The following eight situations are ones in which a wrestler’s entrance was botched. In each case, the wrestler either managed to save face by ignoring the situation or brushing it off, or in other cases, suffered extensively as a result of these mistakes being too great to ignore.
#8 Ultimo Dragon’s entrance at WrestleMania XX
Ultimo Dragon had two dreams when he signed with WWE: to perform at WrestleMania and in Madison Square Garden. At WrestleMania XX, both of those dreams came true, but those dreams came with a price.
Ultimo was part of the Cruiserweight Open for the Cruiserweight Championship, and was the first man to enter the arena for this match. However, as he passed through the curtain, he slipped on the entrance way, before resuming his entrance as normal.
Although the actual slip-up lasted no more than a second, that became one of the most memorable parts of Ultimo’s short WWE career.
#7 Jeff Hardy’s pyro messes up
This particular incident was a literal botch (i.e. unplanned accident) but was rather part of a storyline that Jeff Hardy was involved in at the time. Around this time, a rivalry between Jeff and his brother Matt was blooming, and one part of it was that Jeff’s pyrotechnics-heavy entrance would malfunction, presumably injuring him.
The accident looked realistic as Hardy proceeded to sell injury from the pyrotechnics quite well, which led to some people to believe – at least for a short time – that this injury was real.
Though it was completely scripted, it was one of WWE’s best attempts at blurring the line between scripted and real to further a storyline.
#6 The Undertaker’s bike stalls
Though not a major botch, it was hard to ignore when it happened. Back when the Undertaker played his American Badass persona, a big part of his tendency to ride down to the ring on his motorcycle. That visual alone was enough to really sell the Undertaker as an actual badass, so it was crucial that his entrances always worked.
However, at Vengeance 2003, the Undertaker’s bike stalled just as he reached the top of the entrance ramp and wouldn’t start again. He tried to restart it several times but the bike simply wouldn’t start. So the Undertaker had to walk awkwardly down to the ring, signaling to everyone watching that his bike had just died.
Luckily, ‘Taker was a consummate pro and covered it pretty well through his facial expressions and body motions.
#5 Shawn Michaels' gear gets him stuck
Shawn Michaels is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, but even he couldn’t escape the eventuality of something going wrong in his entrance.
During an entrance for a tournament many years ago, HBK wore his standard wrestling tights for his match, but also some kind of leather ‘strings’ around his torso that was reminiscent of his ‘Boy Toy’ days of the 1990s.
Well, as he knelt down to pray as part of his entrance, one of these pieces of leather somehow got stuck in the entrance ramp, causing HBK to fall backwards and try to get up awkwardly. HBK then had to pull that piece of attire off as hard as possible so that he could get into the ring.
That said, HBK laughed off the entire bit, as he mouthed the words, “that could only happen to me” to the camera as his entrance ended.
#4 Kane's pyro doesn't go off
entrances have always been some of the best WWE have ever produced. The combination of ominous music, red arena lighting and fire pyrotechnics seemed to do wonders for the Kane character whenever he entered an arena.
However, there were many occasions where Kane’s pyro wouldn’t work. The technical set up to make all four corners shoot flames directly into the air must be highly complicated, which is why it couldn’t be guaranteed to work 100% of the time. This was one such a situation, where Kane went for his signature ‘Hell fire’ motion, but the fire didn’t shoot up.
This was followed by Kane trying to pretend the botch never happened, but you can be sure he wasn’t happy that his entrance got messed up.
#3 Sin Cara botches his debut
Sin Cara was one of WWE’s biggest disappointments of the past several years. There were so many issues with his wrestling style, language barriers, and especially, his tendency to botch almost everything he did.
This was a perfect example of that: Sin Cara botched his first-ever ring entrance in WWE by not rotating properly during his somersault into the ring. Cara landed awkwardly on the top rope and tried to shake it off as if nothing ever happened.
But if life has taught us anything, it’s that first impressions matter, and this wasn’t the right one to have. Cara would botch many things in his matches, and would cause a lot of problems in the ring as well. Ultimately, the Sin Cara experiment proved to be a disaster, especially since most people have now referred to him as ‘Sin Botcha’ instead of his actual WWE ring name.
#2 The Undertaker gets set on fire for real
To this day, this remains one of the most terrifying entrance botches in wrestling history because of how awful it looked.
As the Undertaker made his way to the ring for an Elimination Chamber match, the columns of fire that composed a part of his entrance at the time were mistimed. As a result, one of the columns of fire shot straight up and burned the Undertaker not once, not twice, but thrice.
As you can see in this video, the Undertaker literally gets engulfed in flames for a moment, before walking down to the ring faster than he ever has while portraying the Deadman.
As the match progressed, the referees had to douse the Undertaker in water several times throughout the match, and his entire torso looked like he was suffering from an extremely bad case of sunburn. But the fact remains that the Undertaker wrestled that match as if nothing happened is a testament to both his dedication and professionalism as a wrestler.
Meanwhile, the pyrotechnics guy responsible for this incident has not been heard of since.
#1 The Shockmaster
No list of botched wrestler entrances is complete without the single-most memorable and hilarious botches in pro wrestling history, that of the Shockmaster.
The story goes was that Fred Ottman (who was playing the Shockmaster gimmick) had practiced the ‘running through the wall debut’ skit beforehand without issues. However, sometime between that practice run and this live skit, someone had nailed a 2x4 of wood to the set and hadn’t notified the Shockmaster.
So when he ran through the wall, his legs didn’t go through because of said 2x4, which caused him to fall flat on his face and to lose his helmet in the process.
Everyone involved in the segment proceeded to lose their composure over the hilarity of the segment. You could hear the wrestlers in the background laughing and joking in the background before Sid tried to salvage what was left of the segment. Even Ole Anderson, who voiced the Shockmaster, needed a moment to regain his composure in order to cut the Shockmaster’s promo.
So if you’re ever feeling down, this blooper in wrestling history acts as a great pick-me-up because of the sheer hilarity of how it went down and the reactions of all those involved.
