Mick Foley has bled on every inhabitable continent possible. Sabu’s body is horrifically scarred because of it. Tommy Dreamer has had private parts targetted because of it. The late Mike Lockwood, aka Crash Holly, worked 24/7 for it. Now, R-Truth is carrying on that same tradition. Whether the matches were deadly serious or meant for comedy, hardcore spots and matches have permeated the wrestling landscape for years. Long before ECW made it famous and WWE and WCW heavily borrowed from it, the hardcore style had been seen all over the world.
Be it a steel chair, a kendo stick, or a table; when the action spills to the outside, or the rules just fly out the window, the fans can never get enough of the uncensored madness. Over the years, there has been plenty of pillaging and plundering weaponry used to superstars’ advantages. There has also been some strange and sometimes hysterical weaponry used. Here are the 10 weirdest weapons ever used in a hardcore match.
10 Honorable Mention - Bread-Eating Deathmatch
It hasn’t happened in the WWE (yet), but a Bread-Eating Deathmatch might be the most ridiculous thing you’ll ever see in a sport where an octogenarian once gave birth to a hand! While January 4th is traditionally the big show for New Japan; in 2011, on the 3rd, Union Pro featured Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Ken Ohka in the strangest match you’ll google today.
While the two men have a match, they’re tasked with finding out who can eat more bread. The bread was hung above the ring and, while consuming copious amounts of starchy carbs, the baguette could be used to smack your opponent over the head.
9 Bag Of Popcorn
Only from the comically demented minds of Mick Foley and the late, great Owen Hart could this “weapon” become a reality. In a game of one-upsmanship in the ribs department at a House Show, these two started pounding on each other with a giant bag of stadium popcorn.
Since it was a House Show, it was just done to make the boys pop. However, Foley has broken out this spot since, mainly against The Rock during Halftime Heat 1999.
8 Fire Extinguisher
How strange could it really be to beat a man over the head with a fire extinguisher? In reality, it would certainly put a man down for more than a couple of seconds. While this has surely been done before in the wrestling world, it’s just not flashy enough for WWE.
Much like the salts of yesteryear that Mr. Fuji would toss, wrestlers will sometimes head underneath the ring and pull out the fire safety device. Instead of bludgeoning their foe with the end of it, they’ll pull the pin and let her rip to blind their opponent.
7 The Ancient Mist
Only in the showmanship of pro wrestling could a little water and food dye make for a cool and terrifying visual. Dokugiri, or the Poison Fog, originated in Japan and is primarily used by superstars of the Rising Sun like Tajiri and the Great Muta.
There are even different known degrees and colors of the Asian Mist: Green to obstruct vision, Red to burn the eyes, Black to blind for weeks, Blue to put someone to sleep, and Yellow to paralyze. Recently, Roxxi Laveaux introduced the Purple Mist to cause memory loss.
6 Mad Dog Vachon’s Leg
Shawn Michaels defended his newly won WWE Championship against Diesel at In Your House 7: Good Friends, Better Enemies. The two Kliq members duked it out in a “No Holds Barred Match,” a hardcore match long before mainstream fans knew the term.
HBK and Diesel tore into one another in ways not seen since. They fought using snatched shoes off ring announcers, the belt off the referee, and even an artificial leg to beat on each other. During the match, Diesel went into the crowd and charged at legend Mad Dog Vachon, ripping off the man’s artificial leg before attempting to nail Michaels with it.
5 Head
Al Snow found quite possibly one of the most unique ways to get over. After trying several different gimmicks (deluded Rocker, martial arts master), he went bananas and started talking to a mannequin head. Snow would talk to it and hear it talk back, with the wrestler even blaming his losses on the inanimate object.
In ECW, fans would lob their own styrofoam heads into the ring to party with Al. On more than one occasion, the head would be used to deliver devastating headbutts to Al’s opponents.
4 Cookie Sheet
While a cookie sheet could hurt anyone under (or over) the age of 15 if you smash them hard enough, it’s just not that great of a melee weapon to use in a Hardcore Match. However, the sound it generates is something worth hearing, as it reverberates through the arena.
The sound gives the illusion that someone just got rocked! The sheet is safer than a steel chair due to having a lot more give; nevertheless, what on Earth is a cookie sheet doing in a wrestling arena?
3 Water Bottle
To the average person, a full, unopened pressurized plastic water bottle could maybe do a little damage. The same cannot really be said about rough and rugged professional wrestlers, even if they get hit with the capped end.
Leave it to R-Truth, of all people, to have made it his weapon of choice. During the mid-aughts, he’d wallop opponents like John Morrison, Miz, and even John Cena with a bottle of Poland Spring, sending a spray of water throughout the ringside area.
2 Rottweilers
The Big Bossman kidnapped Al Snow’s dog, Pepper. Then he fed it to him...wrestling in the nineties, folks!
To gain revenge, Al Snow challenged the late Hall Of Famer to a "Kennel From Hell" match. The first and only of it’s kind. The ring was surrounded in the old blue bar steel cage and then encased in the Hell In A Cell structure. Surrounding the outside would be “vicious” attack dogs. They did nothing except go to the bathroom all around the ring.
1 Maxi-pad
A lot of noise was made last year when Priscilla Kelly supposedly used a used sanitary napkin on her opponent. Apparently, the short attention span of wrestling fans meant people forgot that this wasn't the first time an item of this nature had been used.
Watch King Of The Ring 2000 and the infamous Hardcore Evening Gown match between Pat Patterson and Gerry Brisco. While it wasn’t a used item, Pat Patterson literally did the same thing as Kelly.