History NeverLiveItDown / ProfessionalWrestling

* To the [[CanadaEh Canadian]] ProfessionalWrestling fans, Wrestling/ShawnMichaels is forever known as the guy [[Wrestling/MontrealScrewjob that screwed]] Wrestling/BretHart out of the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/wwe/wwe-h.html WWE World Heavyweight Championship]]. To this day, whenever Michaels, Wrestling/VinceMcMahon, or former WWE and current Wrestling/{{TNA}} referee Earl Hebner appear in Canada, particularly in Montreal itself, the fans would chant "YOU SCREWED BRET!" at them.

* Most of the people who were involved in the creative side of WCW within the last year or so of its run in some way (Russo, Wrestling/EricBischoff, Wrestling/KevinNash, etc) will probably never live down the stigma that they killed WCW. While their writing didn't help, the biggest factor in WCW's death was more likely the fact that an AOL Time Warner executive who couldn't care less about professional wrestling just so happened to be put in charge of its programming, [[ScrewedByTheNetwork so he cancelled their TV deal]].

* People occasionally rib Wrestling/KennyOmega for the time he wrestled the nine-year-old girl Haruka, the time he wrestled a blowup doll, and other moments of comedy. Omega himself is not ashamed of these moments because he considered them fun. However, Wrestling/JimCornette constantly brings up these moments during his rants about why he thinks Omega is nothing but a waste of space and [[PretenderDiss does not deserve to call himself a wrestler]]. Cornette has said that no matter what Omega accomplishes in the ring, he will continue to hound him for showing him the "dumbest" and "most insulting" things he had ever seen, and Omega can either drop dead or blow him.

* Speaking of Kevin Nash, here's a guy that suffered a biceps tear, took four months to rehab his injury, returned to action in a 6-man-tag and tore his quadriceps within twelve seconds of tagging in. To this day, one of the most common jokes among wrestling fans is how injury-prone Nash is, and that he'd probably tear his quad if he sneezed. And, as mentioned before, for a guy with a 20+ year career, he's always going to carry the stigma of the guy who tried to bury Wrestling/EddieGuerrero and Wrestling/ChrisBenoit, calling them "vanilla midgets", [[RunningTheAsylum breaking Goldberg's streak]] only to drop the title eight nights later via the Fingerpoke of Doom.

* Paul Burchill was hit with this twice. The first was the pirate gimmick in 2006, which is nowadays remembered more for the fact that Wrestling/VinceMcMahon canned the gimmick due to being clueless about [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean its inspiration]]. Otherwise, he’s known for an incest angle he did with his {{kayfabe}} sister [[Wrestling/KatarinaWaters Katie Lea]].

* While typically a SacredCow among wrestling fans, [[Wrestling/BobbyHeenan Bobby "the Brain" Heenan]] has one particular line on commentary that keeps being brought up in a derisive manner: when Hulk Hogan was on his way to the ring at WCW's ''Bash at the Beach'' PPV in 1996, Heenan says "Yeah, but who's side is he on?", which preceded Hogan's infamous FaceHeelTurn. Many consider this line to be a spoiler in retrospect, to the point where it was often muted on home video releases prior to the 2010s. It's unfortunate because not only did Heenan not know that Hogan was going to be the "third man" of the Wrestling/NewWorldOrder[[note]]Maybe. Wrestling/EricBischoff had a tendency to not tell his commentators what was going to happen beforehand so their reactions would be more genuine, but Bischoff himself claims this wasn't the case in this instance. However take ''anything'' Bischoff says with a heaping bowl of salt[[/note]], but this line is actually something that Heenan, who always hated Hogan in Kayfabe, would be expected to say.

* Paul Roma will never live down the match he had against Wrestling/AlexWright at ''[=SuperBrawl=] V'' in 1995, where Roma no-sold Wright's offense, openly mocked his goofy dance and kicked out of the final pinfall at two even though the ref counted three anyway, all because Roma didn't want to job to Wright. Not helped by the fact that Roma was fired from WCW shortly afterwards and aside from a couple dark matches in WWF, he never worked for another major promotion again. He was also briefly in the "worst 4 Horsemen member ever" slot until Steve McMichael took over that spot, as noted above.

* Wrestling/JeffHardy and his drug problems. Of specific note is the infamous ''[[EpicFail Victory Road 2011]]'' disaster, in which Jeff arrived to a PPV he was main eventing late and stoned out of his mind. Thus, the fans had a main event title match that lasted ''ninety seconds'' because Wrestling/{{Sting}} had to forcibly pin him to make sure he wouldn't hurt anybody. The fans, unsurprisingly, were not happy. Nor was Sting for that matter. Certainly no one will ever forget how, upon hearing an outraged fan call out "This is bullshit!", a visibly furious Sting turned around and said (''on live television'' and in full view of the cameras) "[[TranquilFury I agree.]]" [[EpicFail Oof.]] Wrestling/{{TNA}}, who was so forgiving of Hardy's problems to the point that he seemed to have UltimateJobSecurity, sent him home, and when he came back informed him that this was his last chance. Jeff's managed to stay on the wagon since then, but his career and legacy will forever be marred by this incident. That being said, Jeff still managed to [[CueTheFlyingPigs somehow end up being considered]] the ''more'' responsible Hardy brother that year, thanks to his brother's own screw-ups detailed above.

* People who hate Wrestling/JimCornette, and by extension Wrestling/SmokyMountainWrestling, always bring up two things when bashing the company: the fact that there was a guy with a mummy gimmick in what was supposed to be a serious promotion, and Cornette himself wrestling a match with [[Wrestling/BrianHildebrand a guy]] in a cheap [[Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles ninja turtle]] costume. The first one was a request of Music/RickRubin, who was bankrolling the company, the second one [[ItMakesSenseInContext actually made sense in context]].

* Similar to Ole is Wrestling/JimCornette. Cornette was one of the most prominent managers and bookers of his day, but most people nowadays only think of his shoot interviews, particularly the ones where he curses and insults everyone and everything in wrestling that he doesn't like (especially Wrestling/VinceRusso) with no sugar coating whatsoever. He now hosts two podcasts with roughly 7 hours a week of him F-bombing everything that moves, so this isn't likely to change any time soon. He’s also known for a memetic shocked face he once made, which he's actually trademarked and uses as his logo.

* Wrestling/MartyJannetty being the original {{Trope Namer|s}} for BreakupBreakout, which was originally called The Jannetty, and being hired and fired by the WWE within a week in 2006 due to his legal troubles preventing him from meeting their travel demands.
* Wrestling/LexLuger has two: 1) His WWF run, which led to him essentially becoming Hulk Hogan's SpiritualSuccessor despite not being up to the task. 2) His relationship with Wrestling/MissElizabeth that eventually led to Liz's premature death from drug overdose in 2003.

* Wrestling/DrDeathSteveWilliams had a long successful wrestling career, with stints in companies such as WCW and Wrestling/AllJapanProWrestling. Most fans today associate him with his brief stint in the WWF, where he was knocked out by Bart Gunn in the Brawl For All tournament, forever shattering his reputation as a legitimate tough guy. It doesn't help that he was allegedly the favorite among the bookers, to the point where he was allegedly paid the prize money in advance and the judges were believed to skew in favor of Williams.

* Wrestling/CMPunk in his WWE run gained a reputation during that time as being a straight shooting wrestler with a BJJ and Muay Thai background, even going so far as to incorporate some aspects of those arts into his moveset, so during that time, he definitely had a "legit" aura surrounding him. His debut as a mixed martial artist on 09/10/16 saw that aura get completely shattered, where he lost his first match against Mickey Gall in a completely one-sided bout. His second match saw his "pro-wrestling MMA" image get completely scorched against Mike Jackson and while his loss was overturned some years later, he still wasn't able to dominate that match in any capacity and the damage had been done. Because of all this, the image of professional wrestlers being legit "tough guys" took a big hit during that time (at least before Wrestling/JackSwagger undid some of this damage with his moderate MMA success) and even now, CM Punk is still seen as the poster boy for why professional wrestlers should never try their hand at real combat sports.[[note]]Since then, his MMA story has been used as a cautionary tale by other professional wrestlers to know their limits and to start on a smaller scale in amateur combat sports and fight other people on their similar skill level to build up their real life fighting credentials, like how the aformentioned Jack Swagger has done with MMA, John Morrison has built himself up in celebrity boxing, and Jon Moxley has made something of himself in a local Cincinnati ''NAGA'' grappling tournament.[[/note]]

* Paul Roma will never live down the match he had against Wrestling/AlexWright at ''[=SuperBrawl=] V'' in 1995, where Roma no-sold Wright's offense, openly mocked his goofy dance and kicked out of the final pinfall at two even though the ref counted three anyway, all because Roma didn't want to job to Wright. Not helped by the fact that Roma was fired from WCW shortly afterwards and aside from a couple dark matches in WWF, he never worked for another major promotion again.

* A.J. Francis had a short career as a nose tackle in the NFL before debuting in the WWE and wrestling in the Hit Row tag team as Top Dolla. Then he infamously botched a suicide dive (which, had it gone right, would have been impressive for a man of his size). After that a lot of fans were calling him "Flop Dolla".

* Similar to Ole is Wrestling/JimCornette. Cornette was one of the most prominent managers and bookers of his day, but most people nowadays only think of his shoot interviews, particularly the ones where he curses and insults everyone and everything in wrestling that he doesn't like (especially Wrestling/VinceRusso) with no sugar coating whatsoever. He’s also known for a memetic shocked face he once made.

* While typically a SacredCow among wrestling fans, [[Wrestling/BobbyHeenan Bobby "the Brain" Heenan]] has one particular line on commentary that keeps being brought up in a derisive manner: when Hulk Hogan was on his way to the ring at WCW's ''Bash at the Beach'' PPV in 1996, Heenan says "Yeah, but who's side is he on?", which preceded Hogan's infamous FaceHeelTurn. Many consider this line to be a spoiler in retrospect, to the point where it was often muted on home video releases prior to the 2010s. It's unfortunate because not only did Heenan not know that Hogan was going to be the "third man" of the Wrestling/NewWorldOrder, but this line is actually something that Heenan, who always hated Hogan in Kayfabe, would be expected to say.

* Most modern fans know Wrestling/TheIronSheik more for his [[ClusterFBomb profanity-laden]], [[RacistGrandpa hilariously racist]], [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} insane shoot promos]], and less for the fact that he was an Olympic wrestler, a legit strongman, and the WWF Champion who dropped the belt to one Wrestling/HulkHogan and kicked off the phenomenon known as Hulkamania, which subsequently propelled the WWF/WWE into the major player it is today.