10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE Saturday Night's Main Event
2. Harley Race: Honorary Dudley Boy
Harley Race was an undeniable tough guy. An eight-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion, Race is often in the conversation of greatest professional wrestlers ever.
Few fans would consider Handsome Harley a hardcore wrestling innovator, but Race would make hardcore history during the March 1988 episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event when he recorded one of the first table spots in wrestling, and the first in WWF history. (This also predated the fabled Terry Funk table piledriver to Ric Flair at WrestleWar 89 by a full year).
Race battled a championship-less Hulk Hogan just a month after the infamous title loss to Andre the Giant at The Main Event, and things did not go well for the King. Harley placed Hogan on a table at ringside and attempted a headbutt splash off the apron, but the Hulkster moved and Race went splat.
But this wasn’t your typical chipboard table that breaks perfectly in half upon impact that we see almost weekly on television today. Much like the table from the Flair/Funk spot in 1989, the table Harley crashed into was comprised of metal and dented when he landed on it. But it still counts as the first time a table spot graced WWF television.
The incident also took time off Race’s career, as he sustained a hernia, which kept him out of action for six months. After he returned, he would wrestle only a handful more televised bouts and a bunch of house show matches in WWF, All Japan and the NWA before hanging up the boots in 1990.