15 Great Wrestling Moments In 16-Bit

Professional wrestling can be the source of many cherished moments that last a lifetime. From the heartbreak of the breakup of The Rockers to that time in ECW when Terry Funk asked someone to throw him a chair, those are moments that are worth reliving. On the flip side of things, there are also moments that were pretty cringe-worthy in their original airing. The Finger Poke of Doom and The Warrior’s mirror haunting are more in that category, but for different reasons we still rewatch those from time to time.

Not only do we now live in an age in which those moments can be experienced over and over through mediums like Youtube and the WWE Network, but talented individuals are coming up with creative twists to these event, such as reimagining them to resemble something out of a 1990’s Super Nintendo game.

For this article, I was able to team up with Wrestling Arcade for a look back on wrestling’s past. All of the following .gifs are totally brilliant and were created using artistic talent that I can only envy. I merely wrote the words for this piece, providing a little bit of context. If you’re not following @WrestlingArcade on Twitter, go ahead and fix that right now. There are new images constantly being created, such as ACH’s recent banana peel incident with The Young Bucks on a recent episode of Ring of Honor’s weekly show, all in the wonderous resolution of 16-Bit.

15. “Price Check On A Jackass!”

This was a standout moment in Booker T’s career. There’s more than a little bit of silliness here but it’s hard to not look back fondly on it all. Recently looking back on this brawl, Booker told Chris Jericho on his podcast that he and Austin were given the freedom to tear up the very real grocery store in this ad-libbed fight…

“…I don’t know how much the check was that Vince had to write, but they told us we had no guidelines. We could actually just tear the whole place up, so it was a one-shot deal – we could only get it in one take.”

14. Big Show Rides A Casket

There are plenty of over the top wrestling angles throughout history, but this one might top that sort of list. Big Boss Man resorted to a variety of extremely vindictive tactics towards Big Show, including having Show’s mother admit that he was illegitimate and also having a less than reputable cop tell him that his terminally-ill father had passed away while he was still alive.

While Big Show’s father had actually died years before this angle, the storyline funeral was interrupted by the posthumous 2016 WWE Hall of Famer, ending with this beyond ridiculous image of Big Show riding on a casket that was being dragged away by a vehicle driven by the Boss Man. It only seems appropriate that this moment is now memorialized in 16-bit.

13. Ric Flair Strips Down To His Underwear

It’s no secret that many wrestlers in WCW grew frustrated with their work situation during their time in that company. Few got the chance to voice their frustration live on Nitro, but The Nature Boy is the exception to the rule.

What made this Nitro in Baltimore so memorable is that as The Nature Boy grew more and more irate in the middle of the ring, he became more and more naked. He even offered this warning to Eric Bischoff in the back, ”Bischoff, you turn the camera off and I’ll be naked when you come back!”

12. Ladder Match Salida Del Sol

One of the more recent wrestling highlights to get the Wrestling Arcade treatment is that amazing spot between Kalisto and one of the Usos from TLC 2015. The New Day were defending their WWE Tag Team Championships during this Triple Threat Ladder Match and were successful in their retention, probably due to the fact that they didn’t have to break their bodies in this death-defying stunt.

11. 2 Cold Scorpio In WCW

The kids in the original video for this overshot their basketball only for it to land in the sunroof of a nearby limousine. 2 Cold Scorpio came out, asking the kids why they weren’t in school. The youngsters asked if he was going to drive them to school and Scorpio told them that were going to ‘step’ there instead.

I never watched the 2 Cold Scorpio video package hyping his debut in WCW until recently, so I don’t know first-hand how this came across. Was this really a cool way to introduce him to that audience? Comment below if you watched this originally and remember your reaction to it.

10. Rey vs. Eddy

The Cruiserweight Championship Match at Halloween Havoc 1997 was an all-time classic. There’s always a first time that a wrestling fan sees a new move and this match had about twenty of those first times for me, including this insane over-the-top bit of acrobatics to the outside that Rey Mysterio did to Eddie Guerreo.

Check the out Eddie’s Health Meter after the impact on this one. I thought that was a nice touch.

9. A True Villain

In one of the most heelish acts in professional wrestling history, The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase offered young lad Sean $500 dollars if he can simply dribble a basketball 15 times in a row. When the kid gets to 14 in a row, Ted kicked the ball away. He told the boy about learning a harsh lesson in life before the kid ran to his mother. It was truly despicable.

DiBiase later recounted this stunt with Under The Ring(http://blogs.poughkeepsiejournal.com/underthering/2011/08/22/under-the-ring-interview-with-million-dollar-man-ted-dibiase/) ,”Of all the stunts that we did to get the people to understand that I was a scoundrel, was that one…I remember going in the back and everyone’s saying, ‘oh man, that was great.’ I said, ‘it might have been great, but you guys are going to need an armored car to get me out of this building tonight. Those people want to lynch me right now.'”

8. Man In The Mirror

WCW tried to recreate the magic of the Hogan vs. Warrior feud from WWF several years prior, but it didn’t quite click the second time around. Warrior played mind games with Hogan, even performing this mysterious appearance inside of a mirror that only Hulk Hogan could see…

…only it wasn’t only Hogan that saw him. The presentation was confusing here because both announcers Tony Schiavone and Larry Zbysko pointed out Warrior in the mirror while Eric Bischoff, who was in the bathroom alongside of Hogan, kept saying that he couldn’t see anything.

7. “He May Have Swallowed His Tongue”

The quote in the heading was a line Vince McMahon uttered on commentary after this match between Ricky Steamboat and Macho Man Randy Savage descended into chaos. Savage performed a double ax-handle off the top rope onto Steamboat while he was against the rails outside of the ring. Randy then followed that up with a ring bell strike off the top rope onto Savage.

This attack on November 26th, 1986 kayfabe crushed Steamboat’s larynx. He would ultimately win this war when he defeated Savage for his Intercontinental Championship several months later at WrestleMania III in one of the greatest matches of all time.

6. Piledriver On A Table

After Flair defeated Ricky Steamboat at the 1989 WrestleWar Pay-Per-View, the first man to congratulate him was one of the three judges to that match, Terry Funk. His congratulations turned to anger as The Nature Boy respectfully told him that he’d have to wait in line for a title shot.

Funk’s assault on Flair that followed was pure chaos, ending with this devastating Piledriver on a table. The table refused to be an accomplice of Terry’s and simply titled over instead of breaking.

5. ”Someone Throw Me A Chair”

ECW Hardcore Heaven 1994 featured the main event of Terry Funk vs. Cactus Jack. The two rivals briefly joined forces during the match to battle Public Enemy, who interfered to attack them both. Funk wanted an equalizer for the fight and foolishly asked those in attendance for a chair.

Pretty much everyone in attendance wanted to help Terry out and that’s went the torrent began. Chairs and chairs and more chairs rained down from the sky, completely burying the interfering tag team.

4. Nakamura’s NXT Debut

Okay, I mentioned earlier about Kalisto’s Salida Del Sol being one of the more recent 16-Bit spots, but this is actually the most recent one in this article. Shinsuke Nakamura took on Sami Zayn at NXT TakeOver: Dallas just a few weeks ago to the delight of fans on this side of the planet.

Nakamura stopped Zayn short with his dive-through-the-corner Tornado DDT, kicking him straight in the head to stop the oncoming attack. Shinsuke won this first match, looking like the bona fide superstar that he is.

3. “I’m Not Booked”

Thanks to his brief moments on-screen in the wrestling documentary “Beyond The Mat,” Dennis Stamp was a breakout star among wrestling fans. Terry Funk convinced the man to referee his “retirement” match after being upset about not being originally booked on the card.

This memorable scene, now with the look of an early 1990’s video game, shows how Stamp kept himself in always-ready ring shape. His two 10 lb. weights and a pair of underwear on a trampoline is apparently all that it takes.

2. Finger Poke Of Doom

It’s hard to pin down an exact moment when everything fell apart for WCW. There were many points in those final years that can be blamed as the culprit, but this was one of the biggest ones for me.

Kevin Nash vs. Hollywood Hogan on Nitro was a blockbuster matchup that I gladly ignored WWF to tune in for. When Nash willingly laid down for Hogan’s Finger Poke, I clearly remember my befuddled reaction to it. I didn’t completely stop watching the product at that point but it started a growing disinterest.

1. The End Of The Rockers

This is possibly the most iconic betrayal in wrestling history. Both Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty appeared on Brutus Beefcake’s talk show segment to address their potential split. Marty turned his back on Shawn, allowing him the chance to go his separate way if he wanted. Shawn turned him around for a handshake and to raise arms in unison, but it was all a swerve.

The Superkick and throw through the glass was made all the better because Bobby “The Brain” Heenan got to call the action. “Jannetty tried to dive through the window to escape!” That’s still a funny line to hear.

Final Comments & Plugs:

Professional wrestling moments in 16-Bit – it just works. To keep up with all of these fantastic images as they’re made public, make sure to follow Wrestling Arcade on Twitter. Requests are taken from time to time, so make sure to suggest your favorite (or not so favorite) wrestling memory and it just might end up getting turned into Sega Genesis-style art.

Many thanks are extended the brilliant artist behind this account for allowing me to collaborate on this piece. All images in this article are posted by permission and I’m super proud to have been given the opportunity.

Thanks for reading.