10 Incredible Wrestling FIRSTS You Didn't Know About

6. The First Table Break

First ladder match
WWE

This isn't an especially clever idea, since wrestling promoters should ideally do what the fans want, but Christ almighty, a moratorium on table wreckages would do wrestling the world of good.

In a plunder match of any sort, you are guaranteed to see somebody get smashed through a table. Just wait for the thing that always happens to f*cking happen, Jesus.

The tone of a brawl is undermined, constantly, when the wrestlers involved are trying to make it feel like a fight that has consumed them - and nobody gives a hoot about the emotion because they just want to get to the (admittedly very satisfying) crunch of compressed sawdust.

If you too are disillusioned with table fatigue, you can blame - yes! - Memphis for it.

A near-decade before Sabu popularised the spot, as part of the aforementioned Memphis turf war, Randy Savage and brother Lanny worked the Rock N' Roll Express. The table break, a bastardised weekly occurrence in 2023, was a double transgression in 1984. The piledriver itself was banned in the territory, and Savage used it to smash Ricky Morton through a table for what was very possibly the first time. Savage was as much a pioneer as a megastar, and if anything is somehow underrated.

Again, history is slippery - it is said that tables were destroyed in the rough-and-tumble Detroit territory - but the most infamous, certainly, was in Memphis.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!