On the night that The Nexus originally invaded the WWE almost exactly 7 years ago, the young upstarts absolutely DESTROYED everything and everyone in and around the ring. This included ring announcer Justin Roberts, who got stripped half-naked and choked into near unconsciousness by Daniel Bryan.
Yes, everyone's favorite vegan dad, Daniel Bryan.
Some sponsors weren't too happy about the very real-looking violence, and Daniel Bryan was fired.
(SPOILER ALERT: He was eventually re-hired and became one of the most beloved WWE Superstars in recent memory. So he turned out okay.)
Roberts talked about that crazy night in a new interview with Cult of Whatever.
"That was crazy, every week for years I would look around and the people around me would get beat down but they never got me. They would always get the timekeeper and I was always safe. On that night when the Nexus invaded Monday Night Raw, Arn Anderson told me beforehand I may not be safe and that is when we found out what was going on. As far as the tie is concerned it wasn't planned like Daniel came up to me and said he was going to get a tie and do this to me. He had a general idea of what was going to happen and Daniel Bryan is very smart, he is great at what he does and when he saw my laying there with my shirt off and tie around my neck instinct just took over and he saw an opportunity to get the job done which he was supposed to get done. They were told to go out there and cause havoc, nobody said don't do this or don't do that, they were told to make an impact. He really did strangle me and people still to this day ask me if I was acting and I wasn't acting, I was legitimately getting choked. I tried to get my finger in-between my neck and the tie but I just couldn't get it to go in, I was choked for a short amount of time but I was fine and when I got to the back everybody was happy with the way the segment went. Vince was happy, I was happy, Nexus were happy, the fallout came afterwards when one of the sponsors wasn't pleased."
In case you don't remember this little kerfuffle, you can watch the entire segment in the video at the top of the page, and below, you can see a gif of the infamous tie-choke.
Yikes.
