What Are Some Of The Worst Real-Life WWE Wrestling Injuries?

In case you haven't heard already, Brock Lesnar's Royal Rumble match against Braun Strowman and Kane this past weekend has caused a bit of a stir.

At the Royal Rumble, a frustrated Lesnar appeared to give Strowman a full-blown punch in the side of the head after Strowman accidentally kneed the former UFC fighter in the ear.

Although the rest of the match finished without incident, viewers criticised Lesnar for the 'shoot', saying that Strowman could easily have been concussed or even killed by the blow.

As anyone who's seen the WWE's 'Don't Try This At Home' adverts will known, there's no shortage of wrestlers potentially sustaining genuinely serious injuries or even dying in the long history of the company. But what are just a few of those?

Perhaps the most famous real-life injuries in WWE history are those sustained by Mick Foley at King of the Ring 1998. Facing off in a Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker, the notoriously enthusiastic Foley took two enormous bumps that could have ended his career or even killed him, as The Undertaker first threw him off the cell through the ringside announcers' table and then chokeslammed Foley through the roof of the cell.

A famous image of the match showed Foley grinning while one of his teeth - which had been knocked out - hung from his nose, but that was the least of his worries.

That night Foley suffered a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, puncture wounds from drawing pins, a hole in his lip and a dislocated jaw, all in the name of entertainment. Respect to you, Mick.

LISTEN TO MICK FOLEY DISCUSSING HIS MOST PAINFUL BUMP:

Another person who suffered a mashed up face was Joey Mercury, who suffered a broken nose and fractured orbital bone after being smashed in the face by a ladder at Armageddon 2006. He quickly returned to the ring but wasn't the same wrestler, being released by WWE months later.

Neck breaks are one of the biggest risks to wrestlers. At Summerslam 1997, Stone Cold Steve Austin was left out of action for three months after taking a reverse piledriver from Owen Hart. At first Austin couldn't feel his limbs and thought he might be paralysed for life.

A neck break actually ended the career of wrestler Darren 'Droz' Drozdov after D'Lo Brown botched a powerbomb on Droz during a Smackdown event in 1999. Droz was left quadriplegic and continues to need 24-hour in-home care.

Shawn Michaels got injured in a much more innocuous way, again in a match against The Undertaker in 1998. What should have been a simple maneuver of Michaels being tossed out of the ring and onto a coffin ended up with The Heartbreak Kid clipping his back against the coffin instead.

While the injury didn't look that serious, the blow caused him to herniate two of his spinal disc and crush one completely, forcing him to stop wrestling for four years.

Of course, we can't forget the man who suffered the saddest injury of all - Owen Hart. Hart tragically died while being lowered into the ring for a match at Over The Edge in 1999. Descending from the roof in a harness, unfortunately Hart accidentally quick-released the harness and fell almost 80 feet onto the top rope, hurling him into the ring.

Medics attempted to revive Hart but he later died aged 34 from internal bleeding from blunt force trauma. WWE has edited all footage of the incident out of the event when screening it since.

Whether its quad bursts, neck breaks, or knee injuries, we can't possibly cover all of the injuries WWE wrestlers have suffered. Most of the time wrestling isn't real - except when it really, really is.