Pro wrestling used to feature a lot more dangerous activity than they do now. Youre not going to see unprotected chair shots to the head, but when you do, there is a reason for it. In recent memory, many have pointed to the act of gimmicking a chair to make it safer.
AEW received a lot of flash when Swerve Strickland took an unprotected chair shot at AEW All Out. Hangman Page leveled Swerve with a brutal chair shot. Also, Jack Perry took an unprotected chair shot during the Blood & Guts match while he was tied up Tommy Dreamer style. It has been made very clear that there is no such thing as a safe chair shot to the head.
A throwback clip of Bubba Ray Dudley taking a chair shot to the head recently started making the rounds. The caption for the video said, On This Day In WWE 25 years ago (yesterday) at the 1999 Survivor Series: I think Bubba Ray Dudley is still feeling that chairshot from Bradshaw.
Bubba Ray Dudley saw this video, and he had to reply. He did so while bringing up the act of shaving a chair to make it safer and gimmicked. Of course, this was not what happened back in the day, but it still made for a funny tweet.
In more recent memory, Bubba Ray Dudley made an appearance at NXTs show at the 2300 Arena. There were no brutal chair shots during that match, but D-Von Dudley did show up to get the table for Bubba and Trick Williams.
We will have to see what happens in the future when it comes to weapons in pro wrestling matches. Some have elected to use more creative weapons like Lego blocks or other painful instruments to get a pop from the crowd. There will likely always be places that allow unprotected chair shots to the head, but that isnt happening in WWE.
The concern of head trauma and CTE has a lot of people rethinking dangerous pro wrestling spots, and those in the past are being looked at in a new light. While it might be nice to think that you can make a chair shot to the head safer, there is no real way to do this, as Cody Rhodes showed when he was busted open with a gimmicked chair shot during AEWs early days.
Are you glad that pro wrestling is nixing unprotected chair shots to the head? Let us know in the comments below.
