Take That / Professional Wrestling

"Fans, as Hollywood Hogan walks away and you look at forty thousand plus on hand, if you're even THINKING about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not, because we understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here one time as Cactus Jack, is gonna win their World title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh."

—Tony Schiavone on the January 4, 1999 episode of WCW Monday Nitro.

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WCW

• The prime objective of Nitro was "take that, WWF Raw" since its very inception. Hell, even the name Monday Nitro is a play on Monday Night Raw. For starters, Nitro was always broadcasted live save for a few exceptions, while Raw back then was largely taped in advance (they added more live events some time later to counterattack, but still maintained a live/taped schedule, because it's cheaper^note When Nitro first came on the air Raw was taped 4 weeks at a time, airing the first one hour show live and then taping the next 3 weeks worth of shows after they went off the air. After Raw was expanded to two hours they switched to taping every two weeks, airing the first episode live and taping the following week's show immediately after. Raw went live full time in 1999 (save for shows outside North America or holiday specials) and expanded to three hours in 2012). Eric Bischoff made note of it by giving away spoilers to Raw main events during Nitro broadcasts to minimize channel drift (for those who don't know, both Nitro and Raw broadcasts always overlapped each other minimum by one hour). Some of the reveals, especially in hindsight, really made no sense, like during second Nitro broadcast Bischoff spoiled the result of Shawn Michaels vs. Sid Eudy match over on Raw, while on Nitro Sting vs. Michael Wallstreet was about to start.
  DDT Digest: What would you rather watch...? HBK/Sid or Sting/Wall Street?
  • Another infamous spoiler was Bischoff being horribly right and correctly guessing the somewhat disappointing identity of The Higher Power (he couldn't know for sure and the reveal process and conclusion of much hyped storyline over on Raw was broadcasted live). But as soon as on USA Network the hood was removed to reveal IT'S ME AUSTIN! (OOH, SON OF A BITCH!) you probably could hear remote control clicks over the country switching to TNT as Bischoff had his last hurrah in Monday Night Wars.
  • It all came to an end in a moment that will live in wrestling folklore forever - the quote at the top of the page is an example of this backfiring terribly. It came just a few minutes prior to the notorious "Fingerpoke of Doom". Ratings plummeted seconds after it was said, as a massive chunk of the audience changed channels to watch WWF Raw. The thing is, it wasn't even about title win itself (Raw was taped that day, and results were already spoiled by WWF themselves on their website), it was about Mick Foley, one of the most respected, hard-working and well-meaning guys in the industry, finally realizing his dream and winning his first world title, while Tony Schiavone (by no fault of his own, he was forced to say the line by Bischoff), ended up sounding like a total prick^note Though he called Foley that night to apologize. With his reputation already on shaky grounds, Schiavone had trouble finding any job in wrestling post-WCW for quite some time^note Though seeing as how he started off as a baseball commentator (which is how he got into WCW to begin with, Ted Turner owned the Atlanta Braves) and was able to go right back to that, he wasn't hurting for work. For months after the incident, WWF fans would bring signs to shows that read, "Mick Foley put my butt in this seat!" thus launching their own take thats at WCW.
• Vince Russo mocked Jim Ross with the character of "Oklahoma", basically an expy of good old JR who wrestled men and women half his size; in a truly tasteless moment, Russo used Oklahoma to mock Ross for having a neurological disorder that paralyzed half of his face.
• After TBS executives interfered with Russo's programming and forced him to cut way down on edgy material, Russo decided to repackage the Harris Brothers as "Standards and Practices". The idea was that they would go around with a clipboard making sure that everything was up to the high moral code specified by TBS. Being that this was WCW, they were never properly introduced, the commentators failed to sell them well, and they were never pushed and rarely even used. Ironically, this led to the introduction of Ms. Hancock.
• There's a very obscure take that in WCW/nWo Thunder for PlayStation. Eric Bischoff, who was in the game, was given the Figure Four Leglock as a finisher, which is widely used by Ric Flair. Bischoff and Flair absolutely hated each other. As an added bonus, Flair was in the game as well, but with no special moves of his own.^note Flair wasn't supposed to be in the game at all, he was pulled from both Thunder and the massively popular Nintendo 64 game WCW/nWo Revenge due to Flair and WCW suing each other over Flair missing shows (Short version: Flair asked for time off to watch his son compete in an amateur wrestling tournament, was given the okay, and later was told by Bischoff that he had to be at TV that day. Flair refused, no showed, and out come the lawyers). The game programmers decided to throw Flair in the game anyway for whatever reason, though the only way to use him is to enter the "unlock everything" code and he's buried towards the bottom of the wrestler select screen with all the programmers and other joke characters (such as a clown, a horse, and a 7 foot tall green ant. Seriously.), all of whom have identical generic movesets. It couldn't have been a coincidence.
• Speaking of Flair, he and Roddy Piper cut a Worked Shoot promo on the New World Order on WCW Monday Nitro. Syxx (aka Sean Waltman) fired right back a week later with one that might have been more shoot than work:
  Syxx: [Flair] was talking about this new generation of guys not having any respect. Well Ric Flair, I little bit about the history of this sport, and I wanna ask you something right now: What kind of respect is it, ripping one of the legends in this sport off, The Nature Boy Buddy Rogers? You rip his name off! You rip his look off! And you ripped the figure 4 off him! You're a biter, Ric Flair! And I got no respect for you, and very little for you either, Piper. And if you got (gestures to crotch) any sack whatsoever you'll do something about it! Because I don't sweat either one of you! (Hands the mic to Kevin Nash and makes a "Come on!" motion to the camera)
• For some reason Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff thought it would be a good idea to waste PPV time with Hogan cutting a rambling (and for the most part factually incorrect) promo on The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, concluding with Hogan throwing a copy of the Observer into a burning barrel. Dave Meltzer cheerfully pointed out everything Hogan got wrong in that promo while thanking him for the free plug in the following week's issue.
  Hulk Hogan: "Observe this, brother! This is what we call a RAGSHEET, brother!"
• Ted DiBiase was rechristened as "Trillionaire Ted" upon his arrival in WCW, an obvious one of these towards the "Billionaire Ted" skits (themselves an example of this trope) that the WWF was running earlier that year.
• Towards the end of The Rise and Fall of WCW, everybody was trying to guess why the company fell and they blamed three specific people: Vince Russo (who didn't have Vince McMahon to filter his ideas), Kevin Nash (who didn't want anyone to be on top of him), and Jeff Jarrett (who "Broke 6000 guitars and never drew a dime"). Guess what company would later employ all three guys?
  • A lot of people would say Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan rather than Nash and Jarrett.^note While Nash's booking was indeed awful it wasn't quite the business killing run people make it out to be, and regardless Nash just booked the TV, he didn't have any control over the checkbook or who the company hired (for that matter neither did Russo. Bischoff did, though). Jarrett meanwhile was more of a symptom of WCW's problems rather than one of the causes of them and gets blamed just because of the massive amount of X-Pac Heat he gets everywhere he goes (and being close friends with Russo doesn't help). Ratings and attendance were just as bad while Scott Steiner was champ during the promotion's last few months, but no one ever blames him. They worked there too. In fact all five men on the cover of The Death of WCW (Russo, Bischoff, Hogan, Nash, and Scott Hall) all worked for TNA. At the same time.
• A somewhat obscure one, possibly due to the fact that the intended target was a flop and to the awesomeness of the match taking place at the time. During the WCW World Heavyweight Championship match between Sting and Big Van Vader at WCW The Great American Bash 92, July 12, 1992, commentator Jesse Ventura said that there's no money in bodybuilding. This would have been a shot at WWF's failed World Bodybuilding Federation (and Lex Luger, who left WCW for the WBF while he was waiting for his WCW contract to expire), which closed three days after this PPV aired.
• The Dangerous Alliance was one to WCW itself, since Paul E. Dangerously had, in the storyline, been fired as an announcer, but he still had his manager's license and set out on a campaign to destroy WCW as revenge.
• During Marty Jannetty's small run in WCW in 1998, he renamed his Rocker Dropper Finishing Move The Showstopper as a shot at his former teammate Shawn Michaels, who used that as one of his Red Barons.
• On the 10/26/1996 edition of Nitro, while confronting Sting, Scott Hall referred to the fake Sting as a "Bogus Imposter" and mentioned how no one knew about bringing out an imposter "better than us" while pointing to Kevin Nash, a shot towards the infamous fake Diesel and Razor Ramon WWF tried to push as the genuine article.

WWE

• The 1987 WWF-produced album Piledriver includes the Vince McMahon-sung "Stand Back", which basically is McMahon telling off all his competitors with lines like "Stand in my way, I promise you'll lose" and "Along the way, you're gonna see a lot of men drop". The music video for the song tried to make it less obvious by having it consist of André the Giant footage, but the real intent was clear.
• The WWF did three take thats to Dusty Rhodes in six years.
  • Virgil's, "The Million-Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase's bodyguard, name was taken from Rhodes' real name, Virgil Riley Runnels, Jr. When Michael "Virgil" Jones left WWE for WCW, Eric Bischoff responded by naming him Vincent, after Vince McMahon. Similarly, when Mike Rotunda left WWF for WCW in late 1995, Bischoff renamed him V.K. Wallstreet (McMahon's middle name is Kennedy. This was oddly prescient, since, although Rotunda had used the name Michael Wallstreet in 1990-1991 before jumping to WWF to become Irwin R. Schyster, it was four years before WWE's IPO).
  • Turning The One Man Gang into "Akeem the African Dream," a parody of "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes, a fat white guy who tried to talk black.
  • Bruce Prichard's short-lived Reo Rogers gimmick in 1993.
• When Dusty Rhodes actually worked for WWF, they had him wear unflattering black and yellow polkadots. However, Rhodes has claimed that it was presented as a challenge to see if he could get it over, which he did.
• When Goldust was doing his "The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust" gimmick, for some reason, the WWF decided to have him come out as Dusty-dust one night. Before the match, he cut a Dusty style promo to mock him (claiming to have beaten Ric Flair 22 times for the championship). Then, in the actual match, he came out in the unflattering polka-dots and with putty on his upper arm to look like scars. He did Dusty's trademark moves to no avail, as his opponent, Bradshaw no-sold them, finally damn near taking Dustin's head off with a Clothesline From Hell.
• Yokozuna defeated WWF Champion Hulk Hogan for the title at the first King of the Ring PPV on June 13, 1993 by pinning Hogan with his own Finishing Move, the legdrop. A mere two matches later, in the WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion Shawn Michaels vs. Crush match, Crush hit Michaels with a big boot and a legdrop for a two-count. Hogan was probably barely out of the building at that point, and the WWF was already burying his finish.
• Wrestling in general, and McMahon in particular, is not squeamish about taking potshots at their critics:
  • D-Generation X, who took their name from a Phil Mushnick column in ''TV Guide'' that lambasted wrestling fans by calling them "degenerates".
• The Rock took a particularly good shot at WCW during a promo on Chris Jericho.
  The Rock: "You think you impress The Rock? Why? Because a couple of months ago you were down South, beating some jabroni named Juventud?!"
• Jim Cornette did a series of Worked Shoot promos in late 1997 that were full of these, the nastiest being one he delivered to the immortal Hulkster.
  Jim Cornette: "And on a personal note to Hulk Hogan: You are a household word, but so is garbage, and it stinks when it gets old too."
• 1997 also brought us the ECW invasion and the bWo, which gave Vince McMahon (who was doing commentary) a free shot at WCW that he didn't hesitate to take.
  Jerry Lawler: "It's another ECW ripoff!"
  Paul Heyman: "Of what? Exactly what are we ripping off?"
  Vince McMahon: "Well, this certainly has nothing to do with the clothing line of nWo..."
• Not long after this Sean Waltman was turfed from the nWo (and WCW), he promptly went back up north and fortunately caught Vince when he was more than willing to let people take potshots at the competition on camera.
  Sean Waltman: "I heard Hulk Hogan come out on television, saying I couldn't cut the mustard? Well Hulk Hogan, you suck, pal! So I don't think you got any room talking about anybody cutting any kind of mustard." (Takes sunglasses off) "And Hulk, I got some more advice for ya: You better not stop short, or Eric Bischoff will go so far up your ass, he'll know what you had for breakfast!"
  Jim Ross: "Well, he's telling the truth so far..."
• The Right to Censor was a thinly veiled parody of the Real Life Moral Guardians, the Parents' Television Council that had targeted the WWF. Notably, however, unlike many parody characters, the Right to Censor had an extremely good record of victories, as their successes were used as a Kayfabe excuse to make some of the changes the PTC were demanding.
• The Miz moved to Raw, proclaiming that he is awesome and trying to score with chicks, insulting John Cena with arguments echoing the sentiments expressed by his online critics. Cena does not respond to these (or even notice The Miz) for about 8 weeks, due to either being involved in other feuds at the time or being physically incapacitated. Leading up to The Bash, Cena finally confronts The Miz and tells him they have a main event match, the resulting match is Cena no-selling everything The Miz threw at him then beating him to a fine paste. He then continued to squash The Miz whenever they had a match ending on the Raw leading up to SummerSlam where The Miz had the help of 10 other wrestlers and Cena still came back, squashed him and pinned him, banning him from Raw. In other words, WWE put so much time and effort just to say "fuck off" to the Cena haters. The Miz would come back a week later, as a slightly more serious wrestler; he would later win the United States Championship, the Raw Money in the Bank contract and the WWE Championship shortly thereafter, and successfully defend the WWE Championship in the main event of WrestleMania, and then the Intercontinental Championship.
• Gillberg, who was basically a Bizarro version of WCW's biggest star Goldberg. Unlike Goldberg, Gillberg was pale, scrawny, had cheap entrance effects, a very obviously fake chant, had a shitty dotted line tattoo that mocked Goldberg's, could only win with outside help, has the catchphrase "Who's First" instead of "Who's Next," and was even slated to have a 173-match losing streak. However, this was averted when he defeated Goldust due to a distraction by Gillberg's former The J.O.B. Squad ally The Blue Meanie, who was doing his "Bluedust" bit from 1996 ECW.
• The WWF also had the "Billionaire Ted" skits, a horrible take that directed towards WCW's owner and perpetual McMahon boogeyman, Ted Turner. One of the dark matches for WrestleMania XII was the Huckster vs. the Nacho Man with the finish being a double count-out after they knocked each other to the mat in a head-on collision and couldn't get up.
• Mick Foley had some good quotes:
  I thought about going to WCW but then I realized I wasn't old enough.
  (to the Radicalz) What's it like to look out there and actually see people in the audience?
• Halloween Havoc '98 ran longer than scheduled so the PPV feed went out before the end of the title match. Survivor Series 98 had a tournament for the vacant WWF Championship, with these comments during the final match.
  Jim Ross: There is no time limit in this match. We will stay with it until there is a winner.
  Jerry Lawler: You're going to get to see all of this pay-per-view!
  JR: That's not nice King. Making reference to those less fortunate.
  Lawler: It's not nice, but it's accurate.
• In the 2012 Are You Serious? webshow which consisted of a boat load of take that, most of them are from WCW and co-host Road Dogg would simply say "WCW ruins everything."
• Post-Monday Night Wars, the WWE would take shots at certain former WWE employees who have left the company on bad terms, some examples being Randy Savage, Brock Lesnar, and Kurt Angle.
• One an episode of WWE SmackDown!, Christian interrupted an Alberto Del Rio segment to challenge Del Rio's claim that he was going to be a big name in the company (this is slightly paraphrased):
  Christian: I've seen a guy who said he was "the next big thing." I've seen guys who dressed up like male cheerleaders. And I've seen a guy, who honestly thought he was the boogeyman. And I've outlasted them all.
• In 2005, WWE released the DVD The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior, which is the ultimate take that DVD. To be fair, it pretty much described Warrior in real life, especially after his infamous appearance at a student debate when he said that "queering don't make the world work". Seriously. He also took shots at Heath Ledger after his death, calling him "Leather Hedger". The main reason for it was because of Triple H's hatred for UW for how UW squashed him at WrestleMania XII and how he'll never get the job back. However, in later years, Warrior and WWE buried the hatchet, and Warrior took his place in the WWE Hall of Fame three days before his death in 2014. By that time, WWE had stopped selling The Self-Destruction, replacing it with Ultimate Warrior: The Ultimate Collection, which portrays Warrior in a much more positive light.
• When WWE first started the ECW revival, and it was announced that the show would be on the Sci Fi Channel, rumors flew among wrestling fans that NBC/Universal higher-ups were going to force WWE to populate the new brand with sci-fi, fantasy, and horror-themed gimmick wrestlers — exactly the same kind of cartoony nonsense the original ECW stood against. So WWE decided to have a little fun with the idea, starting the first show by introducing a "new ECW 'extremist'" called The Zombie — who promptly got the snot beaten out of him by resident hardcore hero the Sandman, and was never heard from again. The coming weeks would see similarly take that-fueled attacks, as The Sandman mercilessly beat a Nacho Libre/Randy "Macho Man Savage pastiche and a pastor who denounced the new ECW as being too violent and sexual. Of course, despite the fact that the cartoony gimmicks were left out, the new show failed the ECW name in every other way that counted, but that's neither here nor there.
• If Tiffany (real name: Taryn Terrell) is to believed, her then real life husband Drew McIntyre's angle with Kelly Kelly was one from WWE towards her, given that the angle was her idea in the first place (but with Tiffany in Kelly's place). Tiffany was released shortly before this angle came to life.
• Certain WWE divas have started using the finishing moves of TNA wrestlers. Candice used Christian's "Unprettier", Michelle McCool used the "Styles Clash" etc. Might not be a take that, as there are no trademarks on moves, but when a TNA main eventer's finisher is given to a diva more than once, it becomes suspicious. However, the "Styles Clash" had previously been used in WWE by the late Crash Holly, who called it the Crash Landing.
• WWE launched one against Hulk Hogan for jumping ship to TNA. In the opening video for all WWE programming, they removed the "Hulkamania is running wild" sound byte, replacing it with Ted DiBiase's Catchphrase "Everyone's got a price." WWE also, coincidentally, had a new Hulk Hogan DVD coming out of some of his classic matches. Once Hogan signing with TNA had been announced, the commercials made sure to note that the matches on the DVD featured Hogan "in his prime."
• In what is possibly the greatest take that in wrestling history, mostly because it predicted its own existence via a Harsher in Hindsight moment. Jeff Hardy feuded with CM Punk on the basis of him being a drug burnout. Punk defeated him in the end, since he was leaving anyway, taking his title, and getting him booted from the WWE. Not long after this feud ended, Jeff Hardy was arrested for drug trafficking. Punk of course, after WWE was supposedly not going to mention the incident, promptly mentioned it, as a massive take that at Jeff.
• When Shawn Michaels was scheduled to face off against Hulk Hogan, they were originally scheduled to wrestle two matches, with Hogan winning at SummerSlam and Michaels winning the next pay-per-view after that. However, Hogan backed off from the rematch, citing a bad knee, thus meaning Michaels would have to take the loss. What followed was a series of take thats against Hogan courtesy of "The Heartbreak Kid".
  • On an episode of Raw, Michaels referenced an incident during the Monday Night Wars when the WWF finally beat WCW in the ratings caused in large part by Hogan's ego.
    "Hulk Hogan, whatcha gonna do when the Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels won't lay down for you?!"
  • During a mock interview "Larry King" asked Michaels, dressed as Hogan, if he likes wrestling. Michaels responds that it's in his heart, and it's also in his knee, brother!.
  • The first episode of Raw after their match, Michaels turned face again, but he still couldn't resist insulting Hogan.
    "You can chant his name all you like, unless he wants another payoff, he ain't coming back."
  • Hell, Michaels gave Hogan a massive finger during the match by overselling every move, completely making it into a joke. ^note  Michaels has a bit more charitable interpretation of it, however, saying he was told to be like the Shawn Michaels of old, the one who "bounced around the ring like a Superball." Seeing how this was mentioned in WWE Magazine, which rarely has anything bad to say about the company, and people's personal opinions of Michaels, take this with a grain of salt.
• When Larry Zbyszko sent a cease-and-desist letter to WWE concerning Chris Jericho calling himself a "Living Legend" (in which Zbyszko claimed that he legitimately won exclusive rights to the nickname when he defeated Bruno Sammartino in a match), not only did WWE refuse to comply (though they did stop selling "Living Legend" shirts), even Vince McMahon started referring to Jericho as "Living Legend".
• After WWF bought WCW, they took up the contracts of various wrestlers, two of which were Shane Helms and Buff Bagwell. Helms got into a real life fight with Bagwell at WWE's training facility. Helms came out without a scratch and Bagwell needed medical attention. Bagwell was gone from the WWF shortly after putting on a notorious stinker of a match against Booker T on the July 2, 2001 episode of Raw. Sometime after Helms adopted the Hurricane gimmick, he incorporated Bagwell's Finishing Move the Buff Blockbuster (top rope somersault into a neckbreaker) into his offense, with the announcers calling it the "Overcast." Raised to the level of a Genius Bonus for those fans who recognized the move, since Bagwell never got the chance to hit the move himself on WWF television.
• Thanks to a scheduling conflict at Denver's Pepsi Center between an episode of Raw and an NBA playoff game, the WWE launched several of these against the Denver Nuggets.
  • Raw and ECW commentators slammed their owner, Stan Kroenke, and Carmelo Anthony over the course of two days.
  • Taken to ludicrous extremes in the May 25, 2010 episode of Raw, which featured an elaborate 10-man tag team match that is essentially one long, drawn out take that at the Nuggets.
  • Because of the schedule snafu on part of the Pepsi Center management, WWE moved their shows at the last minute to the Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Nuggets' opponent in that playoff series. To be fair, WWE already had the Pepsi Center reserved well in advance, all the way back in August 2008.
• For their 2011-2012 feud, The Rock mocked John Cena's "You Can't See Me!" catchphrase by saying it like a little boy and then asking Cena, "What, are we playing Peek-a-boo here!?"
• After doing their usual promotion stunt against rival wrestler Alberto Del Rio, manager Zeb Colter and wrestler Jack Swagger took a potshot at Glenn Beck who ripped into WWE. You can see the video here
• Since Jack Swagger and Zeb Colter (known as Dutch Mantel outside of WWE) are a rather scathing Take That against the US Tea Party Movement, an ultra-conservative political movement, it's not impossible to assume that Colter name might be a take that against Ann Coulter, a writer and public speaker known for her very conservative and very controversial political commentary. The "Zeb" may have been a Call-Back to when Mantel was calling himself Uncle Zebakiah while managing the Harris Twins (then known as the Jakob and Eli Blu) all the way back in 1995, but this has never been confirmed.
• WWE added New Japan Pro-Wrestling founder Antonio Inoki to the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010. In the video package, the voiceover called his "match" with Muhammad Ali, which just about everyone else in the western world considers a debacle (although in Japan it's seen as a victory of brains over brawn), "the first Mixed Martial Arts contest."
• Dean Douglas was originally scheduled to face Ahmed Johnson at WWF in Your House 5: Season's Beatings, December 17, 1995. However, he claimed he had a back injury and brought in as his replacement his "graduate student," "The Nature Boy" Buddy Landel, who walked out in a fancy robe and to music that bore a distinct resemblance to Flair's. Ahmed squashed Landel in 42 seconds. The whole thing was an In-Joke/Genius Bonus for those Smart Marks who knew of Douglas' hatred for Ric Flair, as it was a guy with the same gimmick and music getting squashed like a bug; although it's perhaps worth noting that, while this still counts as a Take That!, Landel had been wrestling under the "Nature Boy" gimmick for quite some time, even in other promotions.
• At SummerSlam 2015, JBL made a comment dissing Hornswoggle's intelligence. Hornswoggle responded by mentioning on Twitter the time JBL got legitimately punched out by Joey Styles and said JBL was the one with the low IQ for messing with Styles.
• A "Grand Wizard" was the title given to the leader figures of the original incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction Era. Born Ernie Roth, The Grand Wizard, who was gay and Jewish, took the name for exactly that reason and this purpose.
• Not to anyone specific, but, on the September 5, 2002 SmackDown!, Rikishi explained to Edge that he had experienced "the ass of life," and that the Stinkface was his way of throwing everything bad he had experienced in his life back at people.
• For WWE's The Wrestling Album, Jimmy Hart recorded a song titled "Eat Your Heart Out, Rick Springfield." Springfield knew who Hart was and met with him personally, but claimed that he never heard the song.
• In 2019, AJ Styles turns heel and reunites with Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows to reform the Club, only now it's called "the O.C." Both the entrance video & their specialized chyron always start with "Official, Original, Only Club that matters".
• On the April 11th, 2022 edition of RAW, MVP was giving a Motive Rant to Bobby Lashley explaining why he'd turned on him the previous week for Omos, noting that before he came back, Lashley was letting "a sawed-off little runt" and "some wannabe Tik Tok star" run his career into the ground.

TNA/Impact

• Hogan to his own audience no less in TNA. When revealing the standard four-sided ring to replace TNA's unique six-sided one, the crowd roundly booed him and chanted "WE WANT SIX SIDES!" His response:
  Hogan: I got one thing to say about six sides: you had it, and it only got you so far. Now we're takin' ya all the way, Jack! No more eight sides, no more six sides, no more stinkin' playpen rings! ^note  As of now, the six sides are back and Hogan is long gone.
• TNA has used many, many Take Thats against WWE, to the point where it became a de facto rule that "if you were a former WWE employee, you must take shots at said company if you want a push".
  • One example, although one WWE deserved; in 2004, WWE was filming a segment for the Royal Rumble in Florida, when a number of TNA wrestlers (including Ron "R-Truth" Killings) came over with cookies and balloons to greet them (let it be said that, despite working for rival companies, many wrestlers trained and worked together in independent promotions, and are very good friends.) Supposedly, WWE turned them away and refused to air the footage of the encounter. Subsequent episodes of Impact (which at this time aired on Fox Sports Net) made mention of this, and one of them featured a series of sketches with fake versions of Vince McMahon & Triple H heading through the Impact Zone to find "the footage." Finally, they find the tape and smash it with a sledgehammer, with Vince exclaiming "this isn't the footage! This is 'the best of D-Ray 3000'!" ^note  A Joke Character that was popular at the time for his flashy moves and weird hair.
  • Ron Killings gave one to the WWF for never giving Ricky Steamboat a chance to be WWF Champion, strongly implying the only reason a wrestler as talented as Steamboat never got a shot was because he was Asian.
  • On a New Year's Day 2007 episode of Raw, Shawn Michaels mentions that he wants to face "one of the greatest wrestlers of our generation, but he's either not here or is probably jerking the curtain someplace else". This is an indirect response to the Voodoo Kin Mafia, though "reliable" news sources are spinning it as a shot on TNA defectee Kurt Angle, especially when said sources were in their "TNA good! WWE bad!" mode, and the fact that both WWE and Angle were slinging mud at each other at the time.
  • During Jim Cornette's State of the Union address, when he spoke to Jeff Jarrett about the title situation, he expressed his dislike of titles being awarded instead of being won and lost in the ring, specifically by their promoters. Whether if its to their neighbor or to their son-in-law.
  • There was a shot taken by Rhino, an "ECW Original" who had been fired by WWE and subsequently hired by TNA; when WWE revived the ECW brand in 2006, Rhino appeared on an episode of TNA Impact and not only denounced the "new ECW", but proceeded to put a duplicate ECW World Championship belt into a barrel and set it on fire.
  • On the 2/25 2010 episode of iMPACT!, there was a bit where Eric Bischoff is sitting at his desk talking to someone on the phone and he says to them "No, we are not using celebrity guest hosts every week. It's the dumbest damn idea I've ever heard." In fairness, this could be a shot to USA Network instead of WWE.
  • One match had Brother Ray staple a "ECW fears TNA" sign on Abyss's forehead? So what message does that send to Abyss again?
  • One sketch involved an old man with a funny walk storming through TNA's backstage area and demanding that Lauren tell him where his son-in-law was.
  • Back when "The Rated R Superstar" Edge was pushing the PG13 rating to the limit and Kurt Angle wanted to have deviant sex with Booker T's wife, TNA was going PG and announcing they had something better than the competition. "SIX" appeal, in reference to their new six sided ring. The commercial also said Triple H had a big ego and a small heart, in case fans were missing the more subtle messages.
  • The whole thing descended to the point of self-parody when B.G. and Kip James rechristened themselves the Voodoo Kin Mafia and "declared war" on the WWE, which involved standing outside a WWE show with a megaphone making fun of the size of Vince's penis, driving to WWE's head office at 3 AM to launch an offensive, and bringing in a "big fat oily naked guy" just because WWE used one in a couple of skits.
  • During the earlier days of Fortune, Kazarian made Take Thats towards the WWE, from referring to the crowd as the "TNA Galaxy" (a shot at the WWE referring to its fans as the "WWE Universe") to shilling Fortune by saying that they weren't "a group full of rookies."
  • Jackie Gayda claiming how the TNA girls were tougher than the WWE's; this was before the knockout division and was questionable considering the source.
  • Velvet Sky and Daffney took apart the Raw Diva Search after several trained wrestlers were rejected (namely, Sky herself)
  • Turned around where ODB attacking Tara's WWE past was eventually used for heel heat, probably after someone realized how ridiculous it was considering all the other former WWE stars ODB had tolerated until then.
  • Tommy Dreamer complaining about WWE's use of ECW, even though TNA was doing the same thing.
  • Perhaps the ultimate proof of their frequency of take that's towards the WWE is when during a taping of Impact, then-World Heavyweight Champion Mr. Anderson had to redo a promo solely to include shots at the WWE.
  • TNA's entire slogan is that "Wrestling Matters." Except that this is blatantly out of retaliation of WWE's name change^note From "World Wrestling Entertainment" to simply "WWE". The in-show ads only add fuel to this as Eric Bischoff states that they're "Not afraid of the word 'Wrestling.'"
• At TNA Lockdown 2011, Kurt Angle used the RKO in his match against Jeff Jarrett. This is after Angle criticized Orton (and Jack Swagger) on his twitter for using his Angle Slam (and Anklelock). His reason for using the move:
  "Orton, I used Your Finish as a sign of Respect. Not to get back at U. Respect!
  To Randy Orton, as You said- Imitation is a form of flattery. Know that I did that out of Respect. GOD Bless."
  • CM Punk would letter give one right back at Angle:
  "my twitter account was hacked", is the new: "I'm a sloppy drunk douche".
• Batista once criticised the TNA X Division for not "wrestling" in a conventional sense during an interview he gave while injured. AJ Styles' retort? "I think it's funny that someone who takes a back bump and injures himself tells me that I don't know how to wrestle."
• After transforming Jay Lethal into "Black Machismo", Kevin Nash tried to do the same with Sonjay Dutt, giving him replicas of his old "Oz" and "Vinnie Vegas" costumes, only for the other X-Division wrestlers to tell him how ridiculous he looked.
• On Monday, January 4, 2010 TNA had a three hour special on Spike that overlapped with Monday Night Raw on USA. During a break on Raw, inside of a commercial, a Hulk Hogan voiceover basically said, "What the hell are you doing here? Go over to Spike!!" Take That indeed.
• Eric Bischoff posted a rather scathing blog about how stupid WWE was for going PG and focusing on a younger audience. He goes on and talks about how they were losing viewers because of it (the RAW he brings up still maintained their average overall rating while going up against Monday Night Football), proceeds to bring up the demographic data, and states that "facts hurt". This blows up in his face spectacularly, as the very week he says this, TNA Impact dropped below a 1.0 rating for the first time in several weeks. Facts hurt, eh, Eric?
• After Bobby Lashley won the World Heavyweight Title on Impact, TNA posted a picture of him holding the belt on their twitter account reading "The Real Champ Is Here". Just in case you didn't get that this was a directed at John Cena (as opposed to say, Samoa Joe) they then added "You Can't See Me" only with "See" crossed out and "Beat" in its place.
• Ethan Carter The Third mocked WWE's tendency to rename wrestlers and refused to refer to Rycklon Stevens by his WWE name of Ezekiel Jackson, stating it was merely something that was pulled out of a bin.

ECW

• In 1994, ECW introduced a Jobber named Joel Hartgood, a rib on Joel Goodhart, the promoter of the then-defunct Tri-State Wrestling Alliance in Philadelphia, where ECW founder Tod Gordon and many early ECW wrestlers got their starts.
• In the waning days of ECW, Cyrus, an executive from "the network", was introduced. His mission? Turn ECW into good, clean family fun, so it could stand proudly alongside the network's other programs, like Rock 'n Bowl and The Dukes of Hazzard reruns. This was a direct response to what Paul Heyman felt was TNN's complete and utter failure to live up to their promises as far as promoting the show and giving them a "hands-off" creative environment.
• The ECW Revival pay-per-view One Night Stand, aside from providing awesome oldskool ECW-style wrestling, was laden with potshots at both WWE and WCW, most of which spewed from the mouth of Paul Heyman:
  To Eric Bischoff: "It's not Paul Heyman with his tail between his legs at WCW One Night Stand!"
  To Edge: "Hide your wives, it's Edge! ...I have two words for you: MATT FREAKING HARDY!
  And to JBL: You wanna shoot, cowboy? The only reason you were champion on Smack Down! for over a year...is Triple H didn't wanna work Tuesdays!
• Well before ECW got a proper national network gig on TNN, they ran on various networks often at odd hours. One was MSG (Madison Square Garden network), and the commercial breaks were typically introduced by Tammy Lynn Sytch wearing various skimpy outfits. When MSG was bought out and incorporated into the PAX network they didn't immediately cancel the ECW contract, but supposedly asked them to tone down the excessive violence and sex appeal to be in line with the new network's morals. ECW refused, and the bit where it was announced that ECW was leaving MSG/PAX due to the disagreements was hosted by Tammy... Dressed up like a pilgrim woman and/or an extra from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
• At ECW Gangstas Paradise, September 16, 1995, ECW World Tag Team Champions Raven and Stevie Richards defended the belts in a 2 out of 3 Falls Match against The Pit Bulls. During the third fall, Raven used an ether-soaked rag on PB #2, as a shot against Jim Cornette's booking techniques, with Joey Styles saying, "Of all the low-down, old-time,, take that crap to Smoky Mountain!"
• At ECW November to Remember '95, Mikey Whipwreck defended the ECW Championship against "The Extreme Superstar" Steve Austin, who was working as a parody of Hulk Hogan. Austin would hit a big boot followed by a leg drop only to get a two-count. Joey Styles would snark "That lame-ass crap won't work here in ECW."

AEW

• After the 2/12/20 edition of Dynamite went off the air, there was an impromptu tag match where Brandon Cutler and QT Marshall took on the team of Jesus and Scooby-Doo. This is a not-so-subtle shot at Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns respectively. ^note Rollins has been referring to himself as "The Monday Night Messiah" and Roman has been referred to as "The Big Dog".
• During the AEW Puppy Battle Royale that aired as part of the second night of 2020 Fyter Fest, Tony Schiavone took a dig at his WCW past:
  Schiavone: This match is better than anything I called back in 2000.
• With Brodie Lee's reveal as the Dark Order's Exalted One, he says to Christopher Daniels, "You're not the first out of touch old man to not believe in me."
  • Brodie's "You wrestle with the gimmick I give you", as well as his forcing most of the Dark Order to wrestle in masks, is a take that to CHIKARA promoter Mike Quackenbush, who had been forced to close his company down.
• An empty arena match between the Young Bucks and The Butcher & The Blade featured a sandwich board with "OUTLAW MUDSHOW 2 NITE" written on it, an obvious (and petty) shot at Jim Cornette.
• Upon CM Punk's debut on the August 20, 2021 episode of Rampage, during his promo, he declared that he left professional wrestling when he left Ring of Honor. An obvious shot towards WWE, the company he competed in after leaving ROH.
• On the September 17, 2021 episode of Rampage, the last before their AEW women's title match, challenger Ruby Soho had this to say to champion Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D.:
  Soho: Let's talk about the "D.M.D.", huh? On the surface, you look like every other broad I've stepped across the ring from. Entitled... self-centered... and banging some dude in the back."
• The segment featuring The Elite at the beginning of the 3/22/23 edition of Dynamite featured an AEW truck containing the faces of varioush AEW stars including CM Punk, whose face was covered up with cardboard. ^note This taking place months after CM Punk's infamous "Gripebomb." Take That! indeed.

Other

Happens a LOT on the independent level, usually in the form of an In-Joke. If there's an unusual name for a wrestler/finisher/event, it's probably a pot shot at somebody.

• Bobby Rogers boasted about Future Of Wrestling being the first pro wrestling promotion in the world to tour South America, which was a Take That! at Buddy Rogers's fictitious WWF title victory in Brazil.
• In Herb Abrams' UWF, he had a geeky Jobber called Davey "The Observer" Meltzer, shot at Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter.^note The Wrestling Observer Newsletter HATED the UWF, naming Abrams "Worst Television Announcer" in 1990, the UWF the worst promotion and Fury Hour the worst TV show in 1991, and their live TV special Blackjack Brawl the worst major wrestling show in 1994.
• Ring of Honor got one in to WWE in one of their trailers for Death before Dishonor VIII how the PPV is not rated PG. They even show footage of a guy getting strangled by a tie in one of the trailers. ^note Daniel Bryan was temporarily fired from WWE, supposedly for strangling someone with a tie, which supposedly reminded the sponsors of the Chris Benoit Pater Familicide incident.
• Ring Of Honor has thrown quite a few at TNA over the years. TNA cut ties with ROH after one of its founders was caught in a sex scandal, even though Ring Of Honor had already fired him. Attempts to patch things up have never lasted. ROH also has quite a few for The National Wrestling Alliance and CZW but in those cases ROH has retained its working relations with them and just does it in good fun and or because they are having a crossover.
• CHIKARA held Negative Balance on August 13, 2005, which was the same night as CM Punk's last match in the independents, at ROH Punk: The Final Chapter. There was a six-man tag match with Darkness Crabtree, Rorschach and ShareCropper defeating Retail Dragon and Team WWF (Mokuji Ken and "CP Munk"), a guy in a chipmunk costume, complete with a Pepsi logo patch on his shoulder a la Punk's tattoo.) At Tag World Grand Prix 2006 Night I, February 24, 2006, CHIKARA introduced a tag team partner for him, "Colt Cabunny," based on Punk's former tag team partner Colt Cabana, as "Team WWF (World Wildlife Fund)". During their win over Anthony Franco and Matt Turner, they were unmasked as, respectively, Necro Butcher and Joker. (The fact that Necro Butcher was known as The Stoner adds another level to the parody, in contrast with the proudly Straight Edge Punk). Munk disappeared after this. In 2011, Archibald Peck brought Cabunny back as part of his entourage. At the 2011 Season Finale High Noon on November 13th, Peck faced Cabana. During the match, Cabunny rebelled against Peck's mistreatment of him, leading to Cabana winning the match. After the match, Cabana accepted Cabunny, saying, "That's my bunny." (Punk had groused about CP Munk online.)
• In a rare more good natured version of this, friends Colt Cabana and Ace Steel ribbed each other by making appearances in WWE as jobbers, using each other's real name (Scott Colton and Chris Guy, respectively).
• In Missouri was the rated G superstar Mary Elizabeth Monroe, riffing on Edge after WWE went PG. And there were many more, including at least one YouTube series that started referring to Edge as "The Rated G Nintendo Wii" in response to the rating switch.
• One of the recurring segments on GLOW involved owner/boss David McLane talking on the phone with a fellow wrestling promoter named Vince, who in reality wouldn't have given McLane the time of day.
• Lucha Underground opened with owner and promoter Dario Cueto giving a guided tour of the Temple and getting in this nice shot at the competition:
  Dario Cueto: If you think it's too much, too aggressive, dangerous, bloody... change the channel. Or enjoy some other kind of wrestling... [chuckles] from Connecticut.
• For Chad Austin's lone appearance in SMW, he was billed from "Extreme, PA", due to SMW promoter Jim Cornette's longstanding feud with Paul Heyman.
• CHIKARA's 2008 Season Premiere Two Eyebrows Are Better Than One was supposed to have been held at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA but had to be moved to American Legion Hall in Hellertown, PA. The second match was CHIKARA regular Hydra vs. Zombie Plantain (a creation of Dr. Cube, the Big Bad of Kaiju Big Battel, as an Evil Counterpart to KBB's popular Heroes team Los Platanos) vs. The Moravian Greyhound (some guy in a greyhound suit, since Moravian College's teams are called the Greyhounds). The finish was Hydra and Zombie Plantain double-Chokeslamming the Greyhound and pinning him at the same time, with Hydra being ruled the winner.
• The final CHIKARA event of 2007^note The intended Season Finale was Chapter 11 on November 18th, but the show was ended early due to Lince Dorado's injury in his Mask vs. Hair match with "Simply Marvelous" Mitch Ryder, forcing the planned Chris Hero vs. Claudio Castagnoli main event to be rescheduled. was titled Stephen Colbert > Bill O'Reilly.
• On May 21, 2015, Robert Evans (CHIKARA's Archibald Peck/Ring of Honor's R.D. Evans) wrote the following on his Twitter:
  "There's no better sign you're doing everything right than Vince Russo claiming you're doing everything wrong."
• From former CHIKARA wrestler Tursas' Twitter, January 28, 2017.
  "BDK was evil, yes. But Trump is entire other breed of repugnant fascist scum. May he rot eternal in deepest Helheim immersed in troll feces."

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