10 Iconic Sounds In Wrestling
8. The Thigh Slap
It's one of the key weapons in the ever-dwindling kayfabe arsenal. The thigh slap helps sell how devastating a move is meant to be. In Lucha Underground, the thigh slap is a whipcrack, pulsing throughout the arena as superkicks are doled out left, right, and center. Without the thigh slap, Fenix's Animo kick is just a back-leg front-kick, as Bischoff would say.
The thigh slap sells the contact, the impact, the debilitating effects of the maneuver. One need only look back to the NXT championship bout between Lars Sullivan and Aleister Black to see how fragile the big-fight feel of a match can be. All it took was one thigh slap for a kick that didn't connect, one poorly chosen moment to sell a botch, and the audience was immediately lost. The illusion was shattered.