Blatant Lies/Professional Wrestling

These are examples of about Amateur Wrestling, not |the Professional kind


 * Calling the WWE a bunch of liars is pointless because the fights are all scripted and the outcomes are determined. However, they've lied in a few other ways a few times that fans didn't appreciate as much:
 * John Cena never gives up. Period. Both he and the WWE make that claim all the time, because well, full-blooded American heroes like the type he's supposed to be never give up. Problem is, he has given up, three times, to Kurt Angle in No Mercy in 2003 and No Way Out 2004, and to Chris Benoit in Smackdown 2003. And the WWE definitely doesn't want to talk about that one. Speaking of which...
 * Possibly a "lie by admission", but still uncomfortable. Chris Benoit's suicide after murdering his family has caused the WWE to swear never to speak of him again, and as a result, have erased his role in every previous storyline via Retcon and disabled the ability to search for his matches on their website, pretending they didn't happen. Whether you agree with this policy or not, it remains one of their biggest and most blatant deceptions.
 * The whole mess with Steve Austin in Survivor Series 99. During that storyline, Austin was hit by a car driven by Rikishi (oddly enough), and as a result, had to sit out the Triple Threat main event, and was replaced by The Big Show at the last minute. Fair enough, but the trouble is, this fake injury was made to cover up a real one, which was the actual reason he couldn't participate in the event. His neck had been hurt since Summer Slam 1997, and the problem was flaring up again; he needed surgery and likely wouldn't be wrestling for a year. The WWE knew that, but had booked him for the main event of Survivor Series that year, promoting an event they knew he'd never be able to make (driving up sales, naturally, as fans tend to pay more for a match with the star) and using the phony story to excuse it. This wasn't technically false advertising, but it wasn't exactly "true advertising" either.
 * WrestleMania III's attendance was 93,173, a record attendance that would endure for 20 years, or rather it would have if it wasn't a boldfaced lie. Various sources have claimed the actual number was closer to 80,000, and possibly as low as 78,000.
 * They may be big on Fanservice with their Divas, but actual nudity has always been against their policy, aside from a few, ahem, "accidents". Nonetheless, when  the rebooted episodes of ECW started to tank badly, they promised an all-Diva game of Strip Poker. Now, it's unlikely most fans expected them to follow through (this was basic cable, after all) and they did not; they pixelated the Divas' "nudity", which was actually them with flesh-colored underwear.
 * When they set up the unification match for the WWE heavyweight titles in TLC 2013, one inscription on the engraved belt was the indication of a title that went back a hundred years - problem is, it doesn't. In truth, the WCW heavyweight title (previously the NWA title), which does indeed go back that long, was retired in 2001 when it was unified with the WWE titles. The belt at the event looked similar to the older one, but was only marking an eleven-year-old event; makes a better story, though.
 * Usually a Loser Leaves Town match has a "three month rule" in the WWE (as in, three months is the longest the winner can demand the loser leave for) but in the case of John Cena during his long feud with rookie wrestlers The Nexus, it was implied at first it would be permanent. Here's how it went down. After losing during a Hell in a Cell, Cena was forced to join Nexus, and two months later in Survivor Series 2010, Nexus leader Wade Barrett told him if he didn't leave as champion, he was fired. Well, the event was publicized with emotional retrospectives and documentaries about Cena's career, and after he did lose, he gave a long, long tearful goodbye the next night on Raw. Thing is, he didn't even stay away three months, he came back in a week, beating the ever-living crud out of Nexus members until they reinstated him, seemingly cheapening the whole thing.
 * Mick Foley did something similar at No Way Out 2000, putting his career on the line against Triple H in a Hell in a Cell match, losing in a brutal fight and claiming he was leaving forever. Well, he stayed away longer than Cena did (three weeks this time) but came back in the very next Pay-Per-View event. Since then, he wrestled in 2003, 2006, 2008, well, you get the idea.
 * Even worse than that is when they claim that somebody who actually did retire is supposedly coming back. Bret Hart retired for good in 2000, due to concussions and a stroke later, and it's unlikely (well, impossible, as given his injuries, he's uninsurable and can't be legally cleared to wrestle) he'll ever be cleared to do so again. In 2010, however, he'd been advertised as making a return as a wrestler several times in guest matches that were obvious farces.
 * "Once in a Lifetime!" For a full year, the WWE shoved that phrase down fans' throats while promoting the match between John Cena (again) and The Rock, for the main event of WrestleMania XXVIII, claiming it was an event that could only, should only, would only happen "Once in a Lifetime!". With such insistence that it was a "Once in a Lifetime!" event over and over, one would expect it to actually BE "Once in a Lifetime!" But it was not. It happened again the next year, and the WWE knew it would from the start. The Rock said in an interview he had been signed to three WrestleMania matches, the first costing him the title, the second a rematch with Cena, the third a rematch with the title on the line. Maybe the phrase "Twice in a Lifetime" just isn't catchy enough, so they decided "Who cares? Everyone will pay to watch it anyway!"