Determinator/Professional Wrestling


 * Pretty much every main event Face in Professional Wrestling since Hulk Hogan, and half the Heels too. Incidentally, being a Determinator is one of the things that can make a heel a Draco in Leather Pants. It worked for Steve Austin, after all. In fact, wrestling actually has so many Determinators running around, that it actually has a contest to see who the biggest Determinator actually is: the I Quit Match, a special Gimmick Match in which the only way for the match to end is for one of the participants to say the phrase, "I Quit," on a live mic, in front of the thousands of fans in the arena and the millions watching at home. Naturally, I Quit matches tend to be among the most brutal affairs one can see in wrestling.
 * Austin lost his "I Quit" match vs. Bret Hart by passing out while in Hart's "Sharpshooter" hold, rather than submit. He'd rather deal with enough pain to make him lose consciousness than give up. That was just about the turning point...
 * Later, when Austin made his Face Heel Turn at Wrestlemania X-Seven by selling out to Vince McMahon four years later, he was put in a cage match with the Rock the next night. At one point, The Rock put him in the Sharpshooter just like Hart had. This time, Austin started tapping out almost immediately and would have lost the match had Vince not distracted the referee. Symbolically taking away the thing that made him famous in the first place, this pretty much locked in Stone Cold's status as the new heel (as well as him beating up on J.R.).
 * Kenta fucking Kobashi. This defined him. He lost over 60 matches in a row in AJPW, was constantly pinned in tag matches, and overall was made to look like he just barely lost for quite some time. This even worked its way into his finisher, the Burning Hammer, where he was so determined to beat rival/friend Mitsuharu Misawa he had to invent a move that has yet to be kicked out of.
 * Bryan Danielson, both in and out of character. He continued defending the Ring of Honor championship for three months with a separated shoulder, just so that his Story Arc could play out properly; this included an epic 45-minute match with KENTA (who is coincidentally Kenta Kobashi's protege) in which KENTA spent most of the match kicking Danielson in the shoulder, only for Danielson to power through the pain and become the first ROH wrestler to defeat KENTA.
 * Nigel McGuinness proves that Bryan Danielson isn't the only determinator to hold the ROH World Championship. This man, whose signature maneuvers are a wide array of lariats, tore both his biceps towards the end of his title reign. Rather than drop the belt, McGuinness changed his wrestling style to show that even without use of his biggest weapons, or his arms in general, he was still willing to defend his title in any way possible. Much like Danielson, he also defeated KENTA, also while being kicked mercilessly in his arms throughout the match. Two years later, it's still difficult to watch him crumple in pain clutching his biceps while trying to put on a memorable show for the fans.
 * Who can forget Mick Foley's Hell in a Cell Match against The Undertaker. Mick's a determinator to begin with.
 * Ironically, Mick's had two high-profile "I quit" matches and lost both of them. However, neither was because of the pain being too much. In the first match, the Rock cheated by playing a recording of Mick yelling "I quit! I quit!! I QUIT!!!" (from a pre-match taunt) while Foley was on his face unconscious. The second match was a loss because Ric Flair threatened to harm Melina if he didn't quit. Caring more about Melina's safety than his own reputation, Mick obliged. (Melina promptly pulled a Face Heel Turn.)
 * MATT. FUCKING. HARDY. JEFF. FUCKING. HARDY. Both of them proved to be a determinator during any time they were playing faces, in fact, in Matt's latest Face Heel Turn a significant change was he gave up in a match as a way to prove he was no longer the good ol' Matt we all loved to watch. Before that his Nickname was 'the man who will not die'. After his girlfriend cheated on him with Edge & his contract expired at the same time, they waited a while before re-signing him so they could have the storyline of him taking them both on in a super Roaring Rampage of Revenge that only ended when in a Ladder match, Edge knocked him onto the ropes & tied him down while evil Ex Lita put him in a crucifix hold, literally meaning you have to hold him down & tie him to something to make him stop.
 * Kurt Angle won a gold medal in the 1996 Olympics "with a broken freakin' neck!" He's only gotten more unstoppable since.
 * If you've been watching WWE for the past few months, these annoying words should sound familiar too: Just One More Match
 * This is how John Cena has been presented for the past few years: As a man who may not be the strongest or biggest, but will never ever give up even when the odds are stacked against him. He even has "Never Give Up" appear on his shirts as a slogan of sorts. This also implies real life: if he's been injured and taken surgery, expect him coming back into the ring within at least half the amount of time it takes normal people.
 * It's the sole reason he won't lose any "I Quit" matches.
 * Zack Ryder is slowly working his way up: from nobody to Internet Champion to US Champion, he worked his ass off to get far. And in the month of January 2012, he's been battered, bruised, beaten and broken at the hands of Kane and yet it took the Big Red Monster the whole month to get that guy down to the ground.
 * As CM Punk once noted about The Undertaker, "I know what it takes to put him down; I don't know what it takes to keep him down".
 * The Undertaker's embodiment of this trope is even more evident when he performs at Wrestlemania. For reasons unknown (in Kayfabe), The Undertaker cannot be defeated at WrestleMania. Period. It got to the point that, at WrestleMania XVII against Triple H, Undertaker had been beaten so badly that Jerry Lawler (on commentary) remarked that the way Undertaker was struggling to do his signature sit-up indicated that his nervous system was basically all but destroyed by the physical damage he'd taken. Once again... Triple H kicked The Undertaker's ass so badly that Undertaker's nervous system was on the verge of being irreparably destroyed. And Undertaker won the match. It's like Implacable Man and Determinator all in one.
 * Triple H is also an example. In what was probably the greatest tag team match in Raw history, which also had Stone Cold Steve Austin, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit involved, he tore his quad muscles about right before he was supposed to be put in a Walls Of Jericho (Jericho's signature submission hold) on the announcer table. Jericho asked him if he should think of something else to do, and Triple H told him to carry on with the spot. This probably hurt like something that would have hurt like hell, but Chris Jericho, who throughout his autobiography is not too fond of Triple H, put it best- "That right there is a tough mofo."