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10 WWE Superstars Who Never Tapped Out

Winners never quit.




WWE.com

Tapping out is seen as a massive personal failing in the kayfabe world of WWE, even though - in real life - admitting that you have a normal human pain threshold is clearly preferable to getting your arm snapped like a twig because you were too proud to quit.


Despite this, most of the company's top stars have, at one point or another, been made to submit. Triple H tapped at WrestleMania XX. Brock Lesnar gave up at SummerSlam 2003. Even John Cena, the walking embodiment of wrestling's never say die spirit, was forced to break the habit of lifetime during his early days by Kurt Angle.

While each of the aforementioned are guilty of bringing shame upon their families, a handful of others have managed to avoid this fate, going the entirety of their WWE career (at least, so far) without once giving up like a little baby.

Note: the case of The Undertaker is a slightly dubious one, since most of the times he has "tapped out" there have been mitigating circumstances (for example, Teddy Long recreating the Screwjob at Breaking Point '09). On the basis that he has been beaten via submission, we're going to exclude him from the list.

10. Goldberg




WWE Network

You can almost count on one hand the number of times Goldberg has lost a match in WWE. In fact, you literally can count one finger the number of times he has lost a singles match.


Needless to say, none of these were as a result of submission. With the exception of his two Royal Rumble defeats - where he was eliminated by being thrown over the top rope (duh) - all of them came via pinfall.

Those pin-based losses were almost always preceded by shenanigans too. Triple H only got the better of him at SummerSlam 2003's Elimination Chamber, for instance, because of an illegal assist from a sledgehammer-wielding Ric Flair.

The only man who has ever beaten Goldberg clean in a WWE ring is Brock Lesnar, who dismantled the former WCW star in their Universal Championship match at WrestleMania 33. No submissions, though.

9. Roman Reigns




WWE.com

Of course Roman Reigns hasn't tapped out. To have him do so would be to admit that he is just the same as everyone else on the WWE roster.


Interestingly, though, Roman has lost the odd match as a result of a submission. It's just that it's always been someone else's lack of endurance that sealed his defeat. For instance, last year he came up short in the five-way Extreme Rules main event when Samoa Joe passed out Finn Bálor.

He's also been beaten on three separate occasions in tag team matches in which one of his Shield partners (generally Seth Rollins) was forced to submit, including a six-man bout five years ago on SmackDown against the trio of Daniel Bryan, Randy Orton and Kane.

For legal reasons, we're duty-bound to point out here that none of that reflects badly on The Big Dog himself. If he could, he would have selflessly absorbed Seth's pain into his own body to help him pull through.

8. Samoa Joe




WWE.com

Yeah, just look at the guy. There's no way that Samoa Joe is ever tapping out. You could put him on a medieval torture rack and he'd still spit in your face when asked if he's had enough.


Not only is Joe yet to personally submit during his two years working for WWE, most of his victories in the company have come as the result of submission (particularly since one of his signature moves, the Muscle Buster, was put on the naughty step).

In that time, he's forced the likes of Finn Bálor, Chris Jericho, Sami Zayn and Seth Rollins to tap out (or more accurately: pass out), and none of them have even come close to earning an "I quit" out of him by way of return.

Hell, the former TNA star came a hair's breadth away from getting Brock Lesnar to say the magic words at last year's Great Balls of Fire. If that doesn't scream "badass", then nothing does.

7. Roddy Piper




WWE.com

It's a little odd that real-life superhero Hulk Hogan lost a WWE match via submission but Roddy Piper, one of the company's most despised heels, never did.


The former, however, made the mistake of going back to the company for a full-time run in 2002, by which time he was sharing a stage with technicians like Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle, the latter of whom forced him to tap out at King of the Ring.

Piper, meanwhile, fought the bulk of his WWE matches in the '80s, an era when most wrestlers (although not all: Piper himself won a fair few matches by submission) looked to put their opponents away via pinfall.

So, while he lost most of their encounters inside the ring, this is one victory that Hot Rod gets over The Hulkster. That totally makes up for having to go along with all that Mr America crap in '03... probably.

6. AJ Styles




WWE.com

With hindsight, it seems a little bit ridiculous that, two-and-a-half years ago, we were all sitting there worrying that AJ Styles might not be utilised correctly if he signed for Vince McMahon.


Not only has he captured the WWE Championship twice in that time, scoring clean victories over John Cena along the way, he's also never - not once - been forced to tap out.

This stat is made even more impressive when you think about who The Phenomenal One has feuded with. He fought both Cena and Chris Jericho - two of the company's most famous submission, ahem, experts - on multiple occasions, yet when he lost he always did so via pinfall.

Admittedly there's a good chance this will change later in 2018 should he properly cross paths with Daniel Bryan, but until then he belongs to one of the most elite lists in the company.

5. Umaga




WWE.com

On one level, this makes perfect sense. Umaga, after all, was an unstoppable monster: he could have powered out of any hold simply by standing up and swatting his opponent away.


Then again, both Big Show and The Great Khali - who have each been billed in the same way at various points in their career - have succumbed to the occasional submission manœuvre.

Perhaps the salient difference here is that those two are so enormous that, as Kevin Nash found out with his attempted Jackknife on Show back in their WCW days, it's impossible for 90% of the roster to safely pull off their traditional finishing moves.

Anyway, the point is that Umaga (or indeed Eddie Fatu's previous character, Jamal) never gave up. He once lost an eight-man tag by submission when Randy Orton tapped out to Ric Flair's Figure Four Leg Lock, but he didn't once quit himself.

4. Andre The Giant




WWE

If Big Show and Khali ended up having to tap out because of their ring partners' inability to lift them above their head, the same cannot be said of Andre the Giant.


Despite losing a fairly hefty 28% of his matches in a WWE ring - which really isn't a great record when you consider his height advantage over most of the 1980s roster - not one of them came via submission.

The best explanation for this appears to be that the lion's share of his defeats came against the baby-face trio of Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, and Randy Savage, none of whom ever really dabbled in submission manoeuvres, and all of whom, in fact, typically used a "jumping" move to put their opponents away.

Even if you set that aside, it still seems highly unlikely that the company would ever have asked Andre to tap out, particularly during an era when tapping out (or simply telling the referee you've had enough, as was tradition back then) was still pretty rare in general.

3. The Ultimate Warrior




WWE

The Roman Reigns of his day, The Ultimate Warrior too succeeded in going through his entire WWE career without once experiencing the humiliation of tapping out.


Granted, his own spotless submission record isn't quite as impressive as that of The Big Dog. In the so-called Golden Age, wrestlers fought far fewer matches than they do today. And at any rate, Warrior won almost 90% of the time he stepped into the ring.

Still, it speaks to what an incredible run he went on at his peak. For a short period in the early 1990s, he was practically untouchable, so much so that he even scored a clean victory over Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VI.

Despite the brevity of his career, Warrior has gone down as one of the industry's all-time greats, and it's in large part thanks to the fact that he was so protected.

2. Kevin Nash




WWE.com

It sort of makes sense that Kevin Nash has never tapped out, given that he stands seven-foot tall and, as such, most of his matches have seen him dominate his opponents through sheer size advantage alone.


But then he also seems like the kind of smug and smarmy heel who the fans - at least during his post-2000 run, when the practice of beating the mat with a flat hand to symbolise submission had been formally introduced - would have got a kick out of chanting "you tapped out" at.

Unfortunately, those second and third spells on Vince McMahon's payroll were relatively short, and injuries saw that he only fought a select few matches (none of them opposite CM Punk).

An interesting aside is that he did once lose by submission to Samoa Joe while the pair were both performing for TNA, as well as once, as Oz, back at Halloween Havoc 1991. Since we're strictly talking WWE here, those don't count.

1. Braun Strowman




WWE.com

It's best you prepare yourself here, because this one might come as a shock: Braun Strowman is also yet to tap out in a WWE ring. For the good of his character, it's probably for the best that they keep it that way too.


While having a pain threshold is nothing to be ashamed of, the idea of, say, Daniel Bryan wrapping his arms around the Monster Among Men's neck is frankly ridiculous.

At a push, they could maybe have Strowman lose after passing out in Samoa Joe's Coquina Clutch, although even that seems somewhat implausible given that he could easily roll around the ring like an alligator to shake his assailant off.

On a tangential note, many of Braun's early main roster victories came as a result of submission. He used to put opponents away using that cool-looking triangle choke hold - something which appears to have been nixed following Joe's main roster arrival (understandable, really).

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