10 Most Iconic Slips In WWE History
You'll never, ever live it down...
I'd like to take this opportunity to publically thank WWE Superstar Titus O'Neil for everything he has done for us in recent times. The world was a much darker and sadder place before last Friday's Greatest Royal Rumble event, with the Titus Worldwide head honcho's slip providing a moment to end all moments on a show that didn't really provide much in the way of clout for WWE fans.
I guess I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank the higher power, the heavens above, whatever spiritual thing you believe to be real for saving Titus' life. Watch the slip again and you'll realise you saw a man almost die. If O'Neil was half a yard more to his right, he would have flown head first straight into a steel centre post under the ring. If he hit that, at the pace he was going, I doubt he would have lived to tell the tale and be able to count the sweet, sweet duckets generated by his new slip-inspired shirt.
WWE
So to whoever was watching over him as he fell flat on his face - cheers m8.
Of course, being the live action thrilling combat performance that professional wrestling is, wrestlers are always bound to fall flat on their arses from time to time. The line they walk between doing something awe-inspiring and doing something that would make even the most useless couch potato laugh at them in pity is so thin - I guess that's why we love them so dearly.
Of course, Titus O'Neil's slip from last week belongs in this list - maybe at number one - but here are 10 more of the most iconic slips in WWE history.
Oh, how we laughed...
WWE
I'm kicking things off with a pick from the very left field as I love the backstory so much.
The man you see above is Jim Grogan, a cameraman who works for WWE and provides most of, if not all of the outside shots you see on a weekly show or PPV.
Moments after this slip happened, poor old Jim had no idea what was coming his way. Not only was his not so finest hour played on the Titantron in front of an arena of fans, but it was also shown to the entire world as part of the March 6 2018 episode of SmackDown Live.
What's more, to compound his misery, he was caught wearing shorts in that weather. Somebody make the pain stop, it's too much now!
WWE
Where the hell do we start here? That bloke has fallen over on WWE television more times than he's ALLEGEDLY harrassed his colleagues in the shower. ALLEGEDLY! (Edge didn't mind by the way, in an interview with IGN Sports he said: "No knuckles disappeared. It was simply a gentle caress... It was one of those things where I knew I was starting to belong. If they were willing to have fun with me like that, then I knew they must like me, so I just kept doing what I was doing.")
We've seen JBL go down in stages while attempting to come to the rescue of Jerry 'The King' Lawler moments after Dolph Ziggler kicked him in the heart, but what you're seeing above holds a special place in all our hearts.
There he is, coming down the ramp at Elimination Chamber 2017 acting like he owns the joint. In an attempt to prove he's MR BANTER, John attempts to whip out a Texas Two Step but ends up showing off his Texas Twit Fall... I know, that's a quality gag.
Let's just forget about that though and laugh at JBL with egg all over his lovely face!
WWE
Imagine being insulted by a man who dares to mention your alcoholic father before you're doused in liquor even though you're straight edge yet you still come out of this scenario with the last laugh.
That's what happened to CM Punk a few years ago as Chris Jericho put himself on a list: The Slip List! (bah gawd I'm spoiling you tonight with this fire...)
Of course, this badly timed slip took the glistening shine off what had been a pretty disturbing segment. With the subject matter of Y2J's promo in mind, the last thing you would have expected to hear from the crowd would've been laughs - but that's what we ended up with.
If there was ever a moment that deserved a human version of Nelson Muntz to appear and simply say "hah hah," it's this one.
WWE
I know what you're wondering: how on earth didn't Randy Orton's leg snap like a little twig under your foot on a crisp Autumn's morning?
It's simple - he's a snake and snakes are really bendy.
WWE
It's all about the timing...
That damn Justin Gabriel loosened the ropes and lower them just enough to send Version 2 (?) Matt Hardy over the top and to the floor below.
You can just tell that with a lifetime of teaming with his little Brother Nero, Matt never had to think about what his brother was doing and how it could affect him. Obviously, Gabriel isn't his brother, so maybe Matt should have been paying more attention to save himself a little bit of embarrassment - their synergy was never going to be that good considering how fleeting their tandem was at this point.
He's in a new vessel now, though - the person that you see above is essentially an entirely different one so I doubt Matt cares at all at this stage...
WWE
Badd Blood? More like Badd Jumpz amirite? (These reckless levels of BANTER need to stop.)
He'll probably tell you that his maths and angles were absolutely spot on here and your sums spell disaster for you at SACAFICE! But no, Scotty got it all wrong here and couldn't even get enough purchase on the landing to make it look like he was actually going for Test's angles.
I think somebody forgot the ring apron's skirt isn't tied down along the top, you know - I don't know how I can be this condescending when I've never, ever laced up a pair of those boots...
Fight me, Scott (not really just in case you see this and think I'm serious... I BRUISE LIKE A PEACH!)
WWE
With a gimmick like that, some people would label Akeem 'the African Dream' a very unlucky professional wrestler.
Others, after seeing this head first tumble to the floor, will argue that he's actually the luckiest professional wrestler alive today.
Two questions here: firstly, how didn't he break his neck? And secondly, how didn't he create a tunnel all the way through to Australia? A man that size heading towards the floor at that pace and at that angle should have cascaded through the floor, past the earth's core on his way to ending up on the other side of the world.
WWE
He isn't mental, well... I'll start again.
Vince McMahon is mental and harder than both your dad and mine. His quads rolled all the way up to his hip sockets here yet still he didn't break character.
It's an iconic moment made all the more iconic by an iconic man suffering an iconic injury. I guess we're still not quite sure to this day whether the redness on Vince's face was caused by the anger at what had just happened - John Cena and Batista botched the ending of the '05 Rumble, causing a restart - the sheer excruciating pain he was in; or the embarrassment of being rendered useless, sitting on the floor like a petulant child.
You're a trooper, Vince. A bloody hard trooper.
WWE
This was the moment where the real-life Bill Goldberg turned into you or I trying to do an impression of Bill Goldberg in our mother's long mirror. It's also a moment that has been edited out of the WWE Network's version of SummerSlam 2003, but appears in a standalone video on the company's YouTube channel...
At least Bill was able to see the funny side of this slip. Given all that we've heard about his first run in WWE, this kind of moment should have sent an already very bitter and grumpy man over the edge.
At the end of the day, it's always nice to see a person pretending - I know he really is hard, but you know what I mean here - to be hard falling over like this. It's nice to laugh at the misfortune of others, isn't it?
WWE
I know this fall took place in WCW, so you have one of two options here: you can either acknowledge that WWE owns all of WCW's library footage these days, so technically this happened under their watch in some kind of weird parallel universe. Or, you can simply remove this entry from the list and place Titus - who appeared in the intro to this article, remember? - in here at number one because they're both as awesome as each other.
The fall, the horrible helmet falling off, the commentary in the background from the likes of Davey Boy Smith - the bloke you can hear saying: "He fell flat on his arse, he fell flat on his f***ing arse!" - who couldn't believe what he had just seen, the voice, the horrible cringeworthy promo, the shame, the laughter, the tears, the self-loathing... this moment has everything.
I guess I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank the higher power, the heavens above, whatever spiritual thing you believe to be real for saving Titus' life. Watch the slip again and you'll realise you saw a man almost die. If O'Neil was half a yard more to his right, he would have flown head first straight into a steel centre post under the ring. If he hit that, at the pace he was going, I doubt he would have lived to tell the tale and be able to count the sweet, sweet duckets generated by his new slip-inspired shirt.
WWESo to whoever was watching over him as he fell flat on his face - cheers m8.
Of course, being the live action thrilling combat performance that professional wrestling is, wrestlers are always bound to fall flat on their arses from time to time. The line they walk between doing something awe-inspiring and doing something that would make even the most useless couch potato laugh at them in pity is so thin - I guess that's why we love them so dearly.
Of course, Titus O'Neil's slip from last week belongs in this list - maybe at number one - but here are 10 more of the most iconic slips in WWE history.
Oh, how we laughed...
10. That Bloke On SmackDown
WWEI'm kicking things off with a pick from the very left field as I love the backstory so much.
The man you see above is Jim Grogan, a cameraman who works for WWE and provides most of, if not all of the outside shots you see on a weekly show or PPV.
Moments after this slip happened, poor old Jim had no idea what was coming his way. Not only was his not so finest hour played on the Titantron in front of an arena of fans, but it was also shown to the entire world as part of the March 6 2018 episode of SmackDown Live.
What's more, to compound his misery, he was caught wearing shorts in that weather. Somebody make the pain stop, it's too much now!
9. JBL
WWEWhere the hell do we start here? That bloke has fallen over on WWE television more times than he's ALLEGEDLY harrassed his colleagues in the shower. ALLEGEDLY! (Edge didn't mind by the way, in an interview with IGN Sports he said: "No knuckles disappeared. It was simply a gentle caress... It was one of those things where I knew I was starting to belong. If they were willing to have fun with me like that, then I knew they must like me, so I just kept doing what I was doing.")
We've seen JBL go down in stages while attempting to come to the rescue of Jerry 'The King' Lawler moments after Dolph Ziggler kicked him in the heart, but what you're seeing above holds a special place in all our hearts.
There he is, coming down the ramp at Elimination Chamber 2017 acting like he owns the joint. In an attempt to prove he's MR BANTER, John attempts to whip out a Texas Two Step but ends up showing off his Texas Twit Fall... I know, that's a quality gag.
Let's just forget about that though and laugh at JBL with egg all over his lovely face!
8. Chris Jericho
WWEImagine being insulted by a man who dares to mention your alcoholic father before you're doused in liquor even though you're straight edge yet you still come out of this scenario with the last laugh.
That's what happened to CM Punk a few years ago as Chris Jericho put himself on a list: The Slip List! (bah gawd I'm spoiling you tonight with this fire...)
Of course, this badly timed slip took the glistening shine off what had been a pretty disturbing segment. With the subject matter of Y2J's promo in mind, the last thing you would have expected to hear from the crowd would've been laughs - but that's what we ended up with.
If there was ever a moment that deserved a human version of Nelson Muntz to appear and simply say "hah hah," it's this one.
7. Randy Orton
WWEI know what you're wondering: how on earth didn't Randy Orton's leg snap like a little twig under your foot on a crisp Autumn's morning?
It's simple - he's a snake and snakes are really bendy.
6. Matt Hardy
WWEIt's all about the timing...
That damn Justin Gabriel loosened the ropes and lower them just enough to send Version 2 (?) Matt Hardy over the top and to the floor below.
You can just tell that with a lifetime of teaming with his little Brother Nero, Matt never had to think about what his brother was doing and how it could affect him. Obviously, Gabriel isn't his brother, so maybe Matt should have been paying more attention to save himself a little bit of embarrassment - their synergy was never going to be that good considering how fleeting their tandem was at this point.
He's in a new vessel now, though - the person that you see above is essentially an entirely different one so I doubt Matt cares at all at this stage...
5. Scott Steiner
WWEBadd Blood? More like Badd Jumpz amirite? (These reckless levels of BANTER need to stop.)
He'll probably tell you that his maths and angles were absolutely spot on here and your sums spell disaster for you at SACAFICE! But no, Scotty got it all wrong here and couldn't even get enough purchase on the landing to make it look like he was actually going for Test's angles.
I think somebody forgot the ring apron's skirt isn't tied down along the top, you know - I don't know how I can be this condescending when I've never, ever laced up a pair of those boots...
Fight me, Scott (not really just in case you see this and think I'm serious... I BRUISE LIKE A PEACH!)
4. Akeem
WWEWith a gimmick like that, some people would label Akeem 'the African Dream' a very unlucky professional wrestler.
Others, after seeing this head first tumble to the floor, will argue that he's actually the luckiest professional wrestler alive today.
Two questions here: firstly, how didn't he break his neck? And secondly, how didn't he create a tunnel all the way through to Australia? A man that size heading towards the floor at that pace and at that angle should have cascaded through the floor, past the earth's core on his way to ending up on the other side of the world.
3. Vince McMahon
WWEHe isn't mental, well... I'll start again.
Vince McMahon is mental and harder than both your dad and mine. His quads rolled all the way up to his hip sockets here yet still he didn't break character.
It's an iconic moment made all the more iconic by an iconic man suffering an iconic injury. I guess we're still not quite sure to this day whether the redness on Vince's face was caused by the anger at what had just happened - John Cena and Batista botched the ending of the '05 Rumble, causing a restart - the sheer excruciating pain he was in; or the embarrassment of being rendered useless, sitting on the floor like a petulant child.
You're a trooper, Vince. A bloody hard trooper.
2. Goldberg
WWEThis was the moment where the real-life Bill Goldberg turned into you or I trying to do an impression of Bill Goldberg in our mother's long mirror. It's also a moment that has been edited out of the WWE Network's version of SummerSlam 2003, but appears in a standalone video on the company's YouTube channel...
At least Bill was able to see the funny side of this slip. Given all that we've heard about his first run in WWE, this kind of moment should have sent an already very bitter and grumpy man over the edge.
At the end of the day, it's always nice to see a person pretending - I know he really is hard, but you know what I mean here - to be hard falling over like this. It's nice to laugh at the misfortune of others, isn't it?
1. The Shockmaster
WWEI know this fall took place in WCW, so you have one of two options here: you can either acknowledge that WWE owns all of WCW's library footage these days, so technically this happened under their watch in some kind of weird parallel universe. Or, you can simply remove this entry from the list and place Titus - who appeared in the intro to this article, remember? - in here at number one because they're both as awesome as each other.
The fall, the horrible helmet falling off, the commentary in the background from the likes of Davey Boy Smith - the bloke you can hear saying: "He fell flat on his arse, he fell flat on his f***ing arse!" - who couldn't believe what he had just seen, the voice, the horrible cringeworthy promo, the shame, the laughter, the tears, the self-loathing... this moment has everything.
Written by Ross Tweddell
Written and video journalist for Cultaholic Wrestling | twitter: @rossonrasslin | instagram: @rossonrasslin
