Tables matches are now a familiar staple in professional wrestling, as many iconic moments have resulted in such matches as they cemented the legacies of stars such as the Hardys, Edge and Christian and the Dudley Boyz.
While the rules sound simple enough, namely to win you have to put your opponent or opponents (in the case of tag matches) through a table. But for tag team matches, the rule may have a slight caveat as you have to put both opponents on one team through a table in order to emerge victorious.
One example is a recent Smackdown Tag Team Championship match when Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura had to put both Kofi Kingston and Big E through a table. Another loophole in the rules for a tables match is what happens when one competitor puts their own body (or part of it) through a table. This happened years ago when Big Show defended the Intercontinental title against Cody Rhodes in a Tables Match.
At one point, Show stepped on a table set up on the outside in order to get back into the ring, but the table broke due to the leg’s weight. In that instance, the rules determined that Cody won the match, because Show technically “went through” a table, even though it was one body part…and Show did it to himself.
These caveats or loopholes seem to at times muddle the stipulations of a tables match, which is why AEW may have set a new bar when it comes to table matches, during the recent Dynamite in which Sammy Guevara and Matt Hardy had a brutal tables match.
Hall of Famer Jim Ross said that the winner has to put their opponent through a table with an “offensive maneuver”. What that meant was, if Matt Hardy put Sammy on a table and attempted to dive onto him and Sammy moved, Hardy crashing through the table would not end the match…and vice versa.
This also cancels out the notion that if Hardy or Sammy stepped on a table for leverage and it broke through, it does not end the match either. So the match ended, as it should have, with Sammy executing a suplex on Hardy through a table.
Setting the rules like this likely extends the level of brutality involved in a tables match if it doesn’t take one table spot to end it.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
Recent Comments