10 Obscure Wrestling Secrets That Took Years To Discover
8. Gimmicked Tables
Wrestling fans aren’t daft, even if they’ve taken to jeering Ronda Rousey who A) is an actual star, B) wins, because you hate 50/50 booking, don't you? and C) is f*cking amazing at this. They are fully aware that, when a wrestler takes a bump through a table, they’re not splattering on oak (unless, of course, that wrestler is Japanese).
The Japanese are ahead of the curve in terms of in-ring athleticism and selling right now, but they’ve still not cottoned on to the fact that a flimsy structure made up of compressed sawdust, sawed through the underside of the middle to effectively guarantee a wreckage, almost invariably ends up with a satisfying crunch.
The spot is so prevalent now—a table is broken more often than not on pay-per-view—that it’s difficult to conceive of a time when it didn’t feel like a part of the furniture (sorry). But, when Bret Hart first blasted through the (WWF’s) Spanish announce table at Survivor Series ’95, fans bum-rushed the front row as if he’d just landed through a coffee table in their living room.
Key to the success of that incredible spot was the black cloth covering the table; while its flimsiness was visible after the blast, our innocent minds were too busy processing what the f*ck had just happened.
In later years, as the wrestlers pulled exposed tables from under the ring curtain, this acted as a visual metaphor for the exposed sham.