Animals in professional wrestling

The usage of animals in professional wrestling has varied through the art's history. Animals that have been used as opponents to humans in matches include bears, tigers and orangutans.

Bears have long been a part of professional wrestling. Usually declawed and muzzled, they often wrestled shoot matches against audience members, offered a cash reward if they could pin the bear. They also wrestled professionals in worked, often battle royal or handicap, matches (usually booked so the bear won). Wrestling bears enjoyed their greatest popularity in the Southern United States, during the 1960s and 1970s. The wrestling bear Terrible Ted was used many times for Stampede Wrestling and briefly lived at Stu Hart's home in Calgary while working for Stampede, where Stu's son Bret Hart and his other children would sometimes play with him.

Wrestling promoter and wrestler Stu Hart would wrestle tigers in his Stampede Wrestling territory. His match with the Tiger Chi-Chi was performed partly as a publicity stunt for the Calgary Stampede and was on the behalf of the Calgary Fish and Wildlife Association. Hart's daughter Diana also stated that he had a cheetah over to their home, the Hart mansion which he may have planned to wrestle. WWF champion Bruno Sammartino wrestled an orangutan in a match. The match lasted for fifteen minutes with Sammartino earning 25 dollars for each five minute. Sammartino has expressed that he was under the impression that the ape would be a monkey and that he only took the match because he was relatively desperate for money at the time as a young newly debuted wrestler. He also stated that the match was very painful and unsafe as the animal was not trained to perform.

Teddy Hart, grandson of Stu Hart has expressed interest in using animals such as cats and dogs in his matches. He has on many occasions brought his cats with him to the ring. On the matter Hart stated:

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