Things Wrestlers Instantly Regretted

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In professional wrestling, nearly all of what a fan sees is determined ahead of time. From the bombastic entrances to the devastating finishing moves, every decision has been carefully orchestrated to create the maximum amount of joy for the fans watching live and around the world. However, not all of those decisions are things that the wrestlers themselves look back on fondly.

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Whether it is a backstage decision, a nasty bump, or doing something that no one in their right mind would do for anything less than a dump truck full of money, wrestlers from all over the world have done a lot of things in their careers that they would rather be left out of whatever Hall of Fame induction speeches some of them will end up giving towards the end of their careers. With that said, some decisions are so insane, so dangerous, or so stupid, that they regret them the second it’s taken place. These are thing wrestlers immediately thought to themselves «that wasn’t such a bright idea» after doing.

Adam ‘Edge’ Copeland

AEW/Ricky Mavlik

Current AEW star and WWE Hall of Famer Adam ‘Edge’ Copeland could have very easily made it on to this list for the elbow drop he delivered to Malakai Black at the 2024 AEW Double or Nothing pay-per-view. He delivered his version of an elbow drop from the top of a barbed wire steel cage, but Copeland fractured his tibia upon hitting the mat, having landed more vertically than originally expected. While Copeland might have instantly regretted his elbow drop against Black, it pales in comparison to a move that he regretted before he had even performed it.

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At WrestleMania 22 in 2006, Edge and Mick Foley — fueled by their collective desire to steal the show and Edge’s desire to give a legend like Foley a WrestleMania moment — beat the life out of each other in one of the most violent hardcore matches in WWE history. The conclusion of the match saw Edge spear Foley through a flaming table to the outside, literally sending the match out in a blaze of glory. However, Edge noticed something as he was running up to deliver the move.

While Foley had a number of layers on and would be taking the move back first, Edge would be doing the opposite by wearing nothing but his jeans and boots, diving into the inferno face first. Edge has since revealed that he knew it was a bad idea as soon as he started to run towards Foley, and attempted to smother his own face in Foley’s belly to avoid his face melting off. He suffered serious burns to his arms as a result, and has not dove face first into a flaming table since.

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Matt Hardy

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While Edge almost had his face melted off at WrestleMania 22, he almost had his face completely flattened by Matt Hardy a few months earlier. Edge and Hardy were embroiled in a feud so personal it was genuinely difficult at times to figure out where the reality ended and the kayfabe began. It’s been well-documented that while Hardy was rehabbing an injury, his then-girlfriend Lita began an intimate relationship with the Rated-R Superstar, leading to Hardy spreading the news online, and even crashing an episode of «WWE Raw» to attack Edge as a result.

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Their real-life animosity was turned into an angle that led to a brutal steel cage match at the 2005 Unforgiven pay-per-view, a match best remembered for Hardy delivering his trademark leg drop from the top of the cage. If you thought Edge regretted his decision to dive from the cage, Hardy faired even worse in the long-term as the leg drop, while not looking like a devastating move, can have lasting effects on a performers back. On that September night in 2005, Hardy literally changed his bone structure as a result of the move.

Hardy revealed in 2018 that the steel cage leg drop was called «Event Omega,» and was later told by doctors that it is likely the reason that his lower back and pelvis began fusing together. The former WWE star was never the same after the move and Hardy has had back trouble ever since. It’s safe to say that even though he is still wrestling alongside his brother Jeff Hardy almost 20 years after «Event Omega,» that move was one that he might have wished remained just a cool idea.

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Jeff Hardy

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When putting together the proverbial Mount Rushmore of wrestling daredevils, chances are that you won’t find Jeff Hardy’s face on it, mainly because he will have chosen to do a Swanton Bomb off the top of it. Hardy is one of wrestling’s ultimate risk takers. He has put his body on the line more times than anyone can count, jumped from some of the most ludicrous heights imaginable, and still to this day gets a Spider-Man-esque «Spidey Sense» whenever he walks past a ladder. 

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Due to how many bumps the Charismatic Enigma has taken in his near 30 year career, it might be difficult for even some of his biggest fans to pinpoint the one that caused the most damage. Fortunately for them, Hardy himself has a very specific answer. In an interview with Inside The Ropes, Hardy revealed that the worst bump he ever took and one that he regretted doing the moment it happened didn’t happen at a WrestleMania or a pay-per-view; it happened on an episode of «WWE SmackDown» in 2001.

During a Hardcore Championship match against Rob Van Dam, Hardy climbed to the top of a ladder to perform his trademark Swanton Bomb, where he was hoping to crash through Van Dam lying on a table below. RVD moved and Hardy went through the table himself, but instead of the table being set up horizontally, it was set up vertically, meaning that the table exploded under Hardy’s weight, and the frame of the table simply wasn’t there to break his momentum. Hardy had the wind knocked out of him, his lower back was in severe pain for weeks on end afterwards, and Hardy has always preferred his table bumps of the horizontal variety ever since.

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Spike Dudley

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Where do we even start with Spike Dudley? The runt of the Dudley clan has been thrown through stacked tables that were set on fire, chokeslammed to the floor by The Undertaker with nothing but air to cushion his fall, and was the unfortunate soul who had to take three consecutive powerbombs from Brock Lesnar (which was actually meant to be five before Spike himself told Lesnar to stop). With all that said, the worst bump of Dudley’s career is one not many people know about, but Dudley remembers regretting it almost immediately.

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At ECW’s Hardcore Heaven pay-per-view in 1999, Spike teamed up with Balls Mahoney for a match against The Dudley Boyz for the ECW Tag Team Championships. The match began with Spike being tossed around like a beach ball. Mahoney would throw Spike at The Dudleys, who threw him back to Mahoney, who threw him back again. Not the type to play games while defending their titles, Buh Buh Ray and D-Von decided enough was enough and threw Spike over their heads backwards, with Spike landing on the concrete floor, hitting the guardrail on the way down.

Spike recently called this the worst bump of his career when appearing in a recent video on former WWE Superstar Maven’s YouTube channel. He called the spot dumb, painful, and most importantly, meaningless as it was so early in the match that the dangerous moment was used as a throwaway move. Spike always prided himself on always agreeing to things that he knew he could take, but even that was a little too much for the smallest member of the Dudley family.

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Mick Foley

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People like Jeff Hardy and Spike Dudley wouldn’t have been able to pull off some of the stunts that they did if it weren’t for someone like Mick Foley. A man who literally won a tournament called «King of the Deathmatch» in 1995, Foley is called the Hardcore Legend for a reason, because he has put his body through so much pain during his career that the fact he is able to still walk, talk, and think straight is a borderline miracle.

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Everyone knows the story of Foley being thrown off and through the Hell in a Cell structure in 1998 by The Undertaker, who legitimately thought he killed Foley at one point, and his bloodbath with Edge at WrestleMania 22 has already garnered a mention, but neither of those are matches that Foley regrets. That honor goes to his I Quit match against The Rock at the 1999 Royal Rumble pay-per-view, a match that was infamously covered on the «Beyond The Mat» documentary where Foley’s regret and disgust can be seen first-hand.

The finish of the match saw The Rock handcuff Foley’s hands behind his back and hit him with 11 unprotected chair shots that were so hard, it looked like The Rock wasn’t content until he actually saw what was inside Foley’s head. Foley’s children were there to witness the whole thing, a major reason why Foley regretted finishing the match that way; having to explain to his clearly distraught children why he was in need of medical attention was a little too close to home for the Hardcore Legend. The sequence was so brutal that even The Rock finds it uncomfortable to look back on, admitting he went a little overboard with the velocity of his shots.

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Kurt Angle

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Kurt Angle is one of the toughest men to ever step foot in a wrestling ring. Angle has broken his neck more times than there are hours in a day. He wrestled Brock Lesnar in Iron Man match a few hours after Angle ingested enough Vicodin to put a small pharmacy out of business, and most importantly, he was willing to get his head shaved on national pay-per-view and stay bald for the rest of his adult life. So it’s only right that the only thing that the Olympic Gold Medallist was genuinely afraid of at one point was one of his own moves.

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Despite his background, one move of Angle’s that everyone talks about his trademark moonsault, which adds a bit flare to a moveset that stays predominantly grounded. Even though Vince McMahon told Angle not to do it, he insisted that he could, if only on special occasions. This of course led to Angle accidently breaking Hardcore Holly’s arm, which he felt extremely bad about, but it was his steel cage matches in which the moonsaults inflicted the most damage.

Angle revealed that he had to get knee surgery after his steel cage match with Chris Benoit in 2001 because of the moonsault, and that he was actively praying to God that he didn’t injure himself when he faced Mr. Anderson at TNA Lockdown in 2010. Angle did injure himself, jamming his toes into the mat upon landing and giving himself arthritis in his toes that he still has to this day. The landing also broke Anderson’s nose in a moment that he might have regretted in the short-term, but it has gone down as one of TNA’s most famous moments ever since.

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Ethan Page

AEW

Before «All Ego» Ethan Page was the NXT Champion, he was part of the All Elite Wrestling roster, where in 2021, he etched his name in company history forever. When AEW got back on the road in 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic kept them at Daily’s Place for over a year, Page had been embroiled in a feud with Darby Allin that resulted in the first-ever Coffin Match in AEW history, with aim being to lock your opponent in a wooden coffin outside of the ring.

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Allin picked up the victory, but all of the torment that Page had caused in the months leading up the match (which included Page throwing Allin down a flight of stairs), Aliin decided that Page might have been lonely in the coffin and decided to join him by diving the lid of the coffin back first. While the move looked spectacular on camera and no one was seriously injured, Page immediately regretted agreeing to the spot the second the match was over.

Page has stated in multiple interviews that Allin crashing through the lid of the coffin was the scariest moment of his entire career. The reason being is that Page had no communication with anyone backstage, he was just in a wooden box knowing that the most insane man on the AEW roster was going to land on him at any moment, «All Ego» curled up into the fetal position to make sure his knees didn’t become a part of the coffin itself and waited for Allin to jump, which amazingly went according to plan. Allin has since put Andrade El Idolo, Brody King, and Swerve Strickland in coffins over the years, but Page was the only one who had Allin join him in the coffin after the match.

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CM Punk

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CM Punk prides himself on being an honest man. He will stick up for what he believes in, he will call people out who he believes have done wrong, and most importantly, he will admit when he has done wrong and regrets something. Thousands of people around the world have thousands of opinions on some of the things that Punk has said and done, especially in recent years, and arguably the most infamous thing Punk has done is torpedo All Elite Wrestling’s momentum into the earth’s core after All Out 2022.

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For those unaware, after his AEW World Championship match with Jon Moxley, Punk appeared at the post-show media scrum with a box of muffins and lots of things he wanted to get off his chest. He blasted Colt Cabana, The Elite, Hangman Page, MJF, basically anyone who had rubbed him the wrong way in the days and months leading up to the show, resulting in «Brawl Out,» the most famous fight in modern wrestling history that no one knows the full story on.

What people do know is that when Punk returned to AEW in 2023, he knew he was in the wrong for what he did at the media scrum. In an interview with ESPN, Punk revealed that he immediately apologized to AEW President Tony Khan for putting him in such an awkward position, explained why he said what he said, and that he immediately regretted his behaviour the second he left the room. Punk would get into another fight backstage almost a year later at All In 2023, a fight Punk does not regret, and was fired by AEW as a result, leading to his return to WWE at Survivor Series a few months later.

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Ric Flair

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Ric Flair has had such a long career that he’s probably regretted things that he doesn’t even remember (a part from his TNA run he regrets; everyone regrets that). However, the one thing Flair can recall regretting immediately in the moment is entirely unique to him, something that no one could replicate even if they wanted to, and it all happened in North Korea.

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The Collision in Korea event set up by WCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling was the brainchild of Eric Bischoff, who wanted to get one over on Vince McMahon and WWE by being able to boast that they had held the largest wrestling event of all time. While the record books show that the event had 315,000 people in attendance, the nature of the country meant that everyone was forced to be there, so when boxing legend Muhammed Ali took an issue with what one native was saying, even Flair began to panic.

Flair recalled getting his passport confiscated when everyone arrived, before being whisked off to the North Korean equivalent of the White House with Ali and Antonio Inoki for news coverage. According to Flair, Ali overheard one of the translators saying that one of the Korean officers was saying how much they hate Americans and the Japanese as well, to which the boxing legend turned to Flair and said «no wonder we hate these motherf***ers.» Knowing that putting a foot out of line in a country like North Korea would result in a bullet to the head, Flair quietly pleaded to Ali to stop talking. Nothing escalated to the point where either man got in trouble, but Flair confirmed that while the match he had with Inoki was great, from the moment he arrived, he couldn’t wait to leave.

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