10 Weapon Fails That Totally Ruined Wrestling Matches
Tables, ladders and terribly gimmicked chairs, oh my - featuring Roman Reigns, the Hardys, and more.
The problem with working alongside an inanimate object with no sentience is that they don't always play along.
But enough about every other member of the NXT 2.0 roster; this is an article about plunder.
When plunder works, it's fantastic. Some people claim to have tired of it. Every time WWE promotes a ladder match, people roll their eyes. Similarly, it's often felt that AEW has resorted to various iterations of plunder brawls far too often. In 2022 alone, the promotion has presented two Texas Death matches, a third ladder match is imminent, a Dog Collar match took place at Revolution, Darby Allin has worked as many weapons matches as there have been months, Adam Cole and Orange Cassidy worked a Lights Out match, Britt Baker and Thunder Rosa wrestled inside of a steel cage, bringing Rosa's own plunder tally to two (she worked a No DQ opposite Mercedes Martinez on February 16), the Hardys won a cursed tables match over the Butcher and the Blade...
It is still only April, and in addition to these formal gimmick attractions, a table often implodes during the normal course of a straight singles match.
But these matches and spots will keep happening because the millennial generation enjoys watching sawdust fly. The world is omni-f*cked, and any fleeting reminder of when it wasn't restores what is left of our stupid broken souls. These spots always work...
...mostly.
10. The Hardys Flop On AEW Dynamite
The idea was simple, yet also too ambitious.
About a month ago, Tony Khan decided to present the Hardys as the 1999-2001 vintage and reestablish the act as a fun nostalgic midcard concern - via the basic, uplifting fan service of tornado brawls and table wreckage chaos - before a sympathetic veteran run.
The most serviceable greatest hits set imaginable was always going to generate a major goodwill-driven reaction, and the match against Private Party did. The subsequent eight-man tornado bout was a cracking shortcut-driven diversion. The recent Tables match opposite the Butcher and the Blade however undid the good feeling ahead of an inevitable feud with the Young Bucks, which now feels decidedly less like 2017 left something on the table. The table itself is at least still standing, if only because it did not play along at all during the match itself.
In one unfortunate and quite sad spot, the Butcher and the Blade sought to blast Jeff through a table, but a leg gave way, and that was it. They couldn't very well say on commentary "There was no pleasing crunch, so it doesn't count".
It had to count, even if it looked sh*te, but the pacing was so dull and the struggle to do these old spots was so painfully awkward that perhaps there was nothing to ruin.