10 Times Pro Wrestling Got Way Too Real

1. Mass Transit

ECW was notorious for its bloody brawls and wild stunts but nothing could prepare fans for what happened on an ECW house show on November 26th, 1996.

The card was scheduled to featured Axl Rotten and D-Von Dudley against The Gangstas (New Jack and Mustafa) but Rotten was absent due to a family emergency. A local kid called Eric Kulas, who was untrained and only seventeen years old, volunteered to replace him and lied to Paul Heyman, claiming that he was in fact older and had been trained by Killer Kowalski.

Kulas, who weighed around 350lbs, wrestled with a bus driver gimmick under the name Mass Transit. Apparently Kulas was telling the other participants of the match what he wanted them to do, a sign of disrespect. This was noted by New Jack. When Kulas said he wanted to bleed in the match but had never done it before, New Jack happily volunteered to cut him himself.

At the end of the match, New Jack cut Kulas deeply. Very deeply. Video footage of the incident shows New Jack asking Kulas if he was okay (he clearly wasn’t) before they continued to work him over in the ring. Kulas’ father stopped the match by screaming ‘ring the f***ing bell, he’s only seventeen’ as paramedics rushed to the ring to try and stop the bleeding. Kulas was lying in a pool of his own blood as fans and wrestlers began to panic.

ECW fans was used to seeing a fair amount of blood, but this was clearly not supposed to happen. As the medics were tending to Kulas, New Jack picked up the microphone and said ‘I don’t care if the motherf***er dies’. While this might have been an in-character promo, New Jack has made secret of the fact that he’s not sorry about what happened and would do it again if he was put into the same situation (New Jack has been involved in similar incidences since).

The incident scared off pay-per-view providers and had legal implications for New Jack and ECW. New Jack was acquitted of all charges.