Lex Luger, Lawrence Taylor & Paul Heyman All Combined For WCW's Weirdest Ever Match

• Lex Luger played football and even signed with the Green Bay Packers.
• Luger was part of the Four Horsemen when first joining WCW.
• He later became a United States and WCW World Heavyweight Champion.

Prior to Lex Luger taking up wrestling, he was a football player. After being a star in high school, he went to college at the University of Miami, before playing in the Canadian Football League with the Montreal Alouettes. He actually made it to the NFL, signing with the Green Bay Packers, but because of injuries, he never played a down. He ended his career in 1984 playing in the USFL, but with the writing on the wall, Lex Luger made the jump to professional wrestling, debuting one year later.

Luger joined WCW in 1987 and was immediately pushed hard as a member of the Four Horsemen. He later became a United States Champion, and in the summer of 1991 he became the WCW World Heavyweight Champion, but half a year earlier he was being booked in the wildly strange football match.

Lex Luger Took On Big Cat In A Football Match

Paul Heyman And Lawrence Taylor Were Also Involved

• Ric Flair beat Sting for the world title at a 1991 New Jersey WCW house show.
• The same card had Lex Luger and Big Cat strapping on helmets and shoulder pads.
• Lex Luger knocked Big Cat over the top rope to win in two minutes.

On January 11, 1991, WCW had a house show at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The most memorable moment of the night saw Ric Flair beat Sting to become WCW Champion, but earlier Lex Luger took on a man new to the company called Big Cat. The future Curtis Hughes was a heel with Paul E. Dangerously (you know him better as Paul Heyman) in his corner. In Lex Luger's corner, he had the star of the hometown team, Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants. Being that they were in NFL country, and Luger and Hughes both had football backgrounds, WCW decided to have a football match.

For the match, the two competitors had their usual trunks and wrestling boots on, but they also wore jerseys with shoulder pads underneath, and helmets on their head, with Luger wearing Giants blue. The rules of the match were of a battle royal, with the first man dumped over the top rope the loser, but Luger and Hughes started in a football stance, going back to it repeatedly as if these were football drills, before turning it into a wrestling match. After a mere two minutes, Luger knocked Big Cat over the rope for the win. Afterward, Heyman tried a sneak attack on L.T., but Luger had his back, taking out the manager. At the end, the good guys stood tall in one of the weirdest in-ring moments you'll ever see.

This Was Lawrence Taylor's First Wrestling Appearance

L.T. Later Main Evented WrestleMania 11 Against Bam Bam Bigelow

• Lawrence Taylor didn't get physical in the WCW football match.
• Taylor beat Bam Bam Bigelow at WrestleMania 11.
• The WCW football match was silly but harmless.

Lawrence Taylor did not get physically involved in the match at all. He was a fun addition for the adoring crowd and made WCW look as big as WWE, but it would take four more years before we actually saw him in a match. That moment came when the NFL Hall of Famer took on none other than Bam Bam Bigelow in the main event of WrestleMania 11. It's often seen as the worst WrestleMania main event ever, with many hardcore fans upset that a non-wrestler was given the last match at the biggest show of the year. L.T. being booked to beat Bam Bam didn't help, but despite the controversy, he actually looked pretty decent in the ring.

The football match was a head-scratching scene, but WCW, like WWE, loved to work with outside celebrities any chance they could get. In 1991, no football player was as famous as Lawrence Taylor. The football match might have looked silly, but it was also short and painless. At least it didn't take place in the trailer of a truck and no one got electrocuted.