Chairshot Top 5: Strangest Weapons Ever Used in Wrestling

From a prosthetic leg to Jake Roberts’ live cobra, these are the five strangest weapons ever used in professional wrestling history.

Professional wrestling has turned countless household objects into instruments of destruction. These five weapons, however, were so bizarre that even the wildest hardcore match could barely contain them.

Steel chairs, tables and championship belts have become such familiar wrestling weapons that nobody questions their presence anymore. The referee goes down, somebody grabs a chair and the audience understands exactly what is about to happen.

Then there are the objects that make absolutely no sense until a wrestler decides to hit somebody with them.

The rise of hardcore wrestling encouraged performers to search beyond the traditional toolbox. Kitchens, sporting-goods departments and hardware stores suddenly became potential arsenals. Wrestlers have attacked one another with everything from household appliances to body parts that were no longer attached to their original owner.

To qualify for this list, an object needed to be more than unusual. It had to create a memorable wrestling moment while making fans wonder who came up with the idea in the first place.

#5: A Kitchen Sink

The phrase “everything but the kitchen sink” exists because the kitchen sink is supposed to be the one object too large, inconvenient and ridiculous to bring into a fight. Naturally, professional wrestling found a way.

At Backlash 1999, Al Snow challenged Hardcore Holly for the WWF Hardcore Championship in the kind of match that treated the entire arena as a weapons cabinet. The fight moved through the crowd, backstage and into the parking area as both men grabbed whatever happened to be within reach.

That included an actual kitchen sink. Holly attempted to lift the sink and use it against Snow, only to abandon the plan when Snow sprayed him with a hose. It was not the most devastating weapon in the match, but it may have been the most perfectly absurd. The company had managed to turn an old expression into a wrestling spot.

The Attitude Era’s Hardcore Championship produced plenty of chaos, but few moments represented its philosophy better. If an object could be lifted, dragged or shoved toward an opponent, somebody was going to try using it.

#4: Al Snow’s Mannequin Head

Al Snow did not merely carry a mannequin head to the ring. He talked to it, sought its advice and treated it like a trusted companion.

That already made Head one of wrestling’s strangest props. The fact that Snow regularly used it as a weapon made the situation even more unusual.

Head became central to Snow’s character during his run in ECW and followed him into the WWF, where crowds enthusiastically waved mannequin heads of their own. What began as a symbol of Snow’s unstable personality became one of the most recognizable accessories of the Attitude Era. It also proved useful whenever a match had no disqualifications.

Snow could grab Head by its attached pole and swing it like a club. At Backlash 1999, he struck Hardcore Holly with it before winning the Hardcore Championship. Head was simultaneously a mascot, tag-team partner, emotional support object and illegal weapon.

Wrestling has featured plenty of managers who interfered in matches. Al Snow may be the only wrestler whose manager had no body and was used to knock opponents unconscious.

#3: New Jack’s Staple Gun

Most wrestlers carefully build toward a dramatic weapon spot. New Jack frequently entered the building with an entire garbage can or shopping cart filled with objects he planned to use immediately.

Street signs, crutches, keyboards, vacuum cleaners and assorted pieces of arena equipment could all become part of his matches. The staple gun, however, became one of his most unsettling trademarks.

New Jack sometimes wore it around his neck on a chain, making the weapon part of his appearance rather than something hidden beneath the ring. He would use it to fasten objects to an opponent’s forehead, combining violence with a disturbing kind of arts and crafts.

During New Jack’s ECW rivalry with The Baldies, Spanish Angel eventually turned the weapon against him and stapled him near the eye. Even by ECW standards, it was a visual that made viewers instinctively reach for their own faces.

Thumbtacks and barbed wire are dangerous, but they at least became established parts of hardcore wrestling. A staple gun belonged in a garage or workshop. New Jack looked at it and saw another way to make a wrestling match impossible to forget.

#2: Mad Dog Vachon’s Prosthetic Leg

Shawn Michaels and Diesel spent the main event of In Your House: Good Friends, Better Enemies battering each other in a violent No Holds Barred match for the WWF Championship. The finish required one weapon nobody could have predicted.

Mad Dog Vachon was seated at ringside when Diesel approached him, knocked him from his chair and removed his prosthetic leg. Diesel intended to use it against Michaels, but a low blow changed those plans. Michaels grabbed the leg and struck Diesel with it before delivering Sweet Chin Music for the victory.

Read that sequence again. The WWF Championship changed hands—or, more accurately, remained in Michaels’ hands—after the champion hit his challenger with a legendary wrestler’s artificial limb.

The moment was bizarre, uncomfortable and perfectly suited to the escalating hatred between Michaels and Diesel. Standard weapons were no longer enough. Diesel had ripped the prosthetic leg from a respected veteran, only for the decision to cost him the match.

Wrestling fans have seen competitors target an opponent’s injured body part. This may be the only major championship match decided with someone else’s replacement body part.

Honorable Mention: The Mountie’s Cattle Prod

The Mountie claimed he always got his man, and his preferred method involved an electrified cattle prod. Jacques Rougeau’s law-enforcement character carried the device to the ring and used it to shock opponents whenever the referee was distracted. It was an unmistakable prop that fit the gimmick while giving The Mountie an easy way to steal victories.

The cattle prod lacked the shock value of the higher-ranked weapons because it was designed specifically for the character. Still, the image of a brightly dressed Canadian lawman incapacitating wrestlers with livestock equipment remains wonderfully strange.

#1: Jake Roberts’ King Cobra

Jake “The Snake” Roberts bringing reptiles to the ring was intimidating enough. In 1991, WWE crossed a line that transformed his snake from a psychological weapon into a literal one.

During Roberts’ rivalry with Randy Savage, Roberts tied Savage in the ropes and released a king cobra. The snake bit Savage on the arm and remained attached as officials desperately tried to restore order.

The cobra had been devenomized, but that knowledge did little to make the scene easier to watch. Savage’s fear looked genuine because a live snake was actually biting him. Roberts later explained that the cobra had difficulty releasing its grip, adding another layer of danger to an angle already filled with it.

Modern wrestling can create almost anything through production, editing and controlled special effects. The Savage incident remains uniquely disturbing because the central image was real. There was no foam prop or mechanical snake. It was a living animal clamped onto one of wrestling’s biggest stars.

Roberts had already built his career around making opponents fear Damien. The cobra attack pushed that concept to its most extreme conclusion and turned a wrestler’s signature companion into the strangest weapon ever used on WWE television.

Professional wrestling operates in a world where almost any object can become dangerous once it enters the arena. A kitchen fixture can become a punchline, a mannequin can win a championship and a prosthetic leg can help decide a pay-per-view main event.

The best unusual weapons do more than surprise the audience. They become permanently connected to the wrestlers and rivalries that introduced them. Fans may forget individual chair shots, but they remember Shawn Michaels swinging Mad Dog Vachon’s leg and Jake Roberts standing beside a cobra attached to Randy Savage’s arm.

Those moments could only happen in professional wrestling—and in several cases, they probably should have happened nowhere else.