Chairshot Top 5: Most Ridiculous Things Hidden Under a Wrestling Ring

From Dean Ambrose’s chainsaw to a giant mousetrap and an entire courtroom, these are the most ridiculous things found under a wrestling ring.

Tables, chairs and ladders underneath a wrestling ring barely raise an eyebrow anymore. A chainsaw, a giant mousetrap, The Boogeyman and an entire functioning courtroom are another story. These are the most ridiculous things wrestling has ever asked fans to believe were hiding beneath the squared circle.

The space underneath a professional wrestling ring apparently operates according to different laws of storage than anywhere else on Earth. Folding chairs make sense, spare tables are at least defensible and even a fire extinguisher belongs somewhere nearby when an arena is filled with pyrotechnics.

Professional wrestling refused to stop there.

Once wrestlers discovered they could reach beneath the apron during a no-disqualification match, the area became less like equipment storage and more like a magical inventory screen. Kendo sticks appeared despite having no obvious role in ring construction, sledgehammers waited conveniently for Triple H, and increasingly elaborate objects materialized whenever a match needed another escalation.

People have hidden beneath the ring as well, sometimes spending hours there before appearing at precisely the right moment. Hornswoggle practically turned the space into a second home, while other wrestlers used it as the wrestling equivalent of a secret passage.

This ranking rewards pure absurdity. Ordinary weapons do not qualify simply because they were stored under the ring; the item, person or apparent underground facility needs to create the obvious question wrestling fans have been asking for decades: Why in the world was that under there?

These are the Top 5 most ridiculous things hidden under a wrestling ring.

#5 — Dean Ambrose’s Chainsaw

Dean Ambrose entered his WrestleMania 32 Street Fight against Brock Lesnar with an impressive collection of weapons already established during the build. Mick Foley gave him a barbed-wire baseball bat, Terry Funk handed him a chainsaw and WWE seemed determined to present Ambrose as someone willing to go places Lesnar might not expect.

The chainsaw eventually made it underneath the ring.

During the match, Ambrose searched beneath the apron and emerged carrying the weapon Funk had given him. Paul Heyman reacted appropriately because, even within the extremely flexible rules of a Street Fight, a functioning chainsaw creates some fairly obvious logistical problems.

Ambrose attempted to start it, failed and was immediately intercepted by Lesnar. The moment never developed beyond the threat, which was probably the healthiest possible outcome for everyone involved.

That does not answer the storage question.

Wrestling fans have learned to accept a chair under the ring because crew members may need it. Tables can theoretically be used during setup, and the sledgehammer at least has some relationship to assembling a wrestling ring.

A chainsaw requires considerably more imagination.

Someone within WWE’s fictional universe apparently decided the safest place for a gasoline-powered cutting tool was beneath a structure where performers repeatedly throw themselves onto the canvas.

Ambrose never managed to use it, but simply finding the thing beneath a WrestleMania ring earns it a place here.

#4 — Kane’s Gas Can for a Flaming Table

WWE Extreme Rules 2014 featured Daniel Bryan defending the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against Kane in a match designed to revive the most destructive version of the Big Red Monster.

That eventually meant setting something on fire.

Late in the match, Kane pulled a table from beneath the ring, which was completely ordinary by Extreme Rules standards. He then returned underneath and produced a red fuel container that was considerably more difficult to explain.

Kane poured the fuel across the table and ignited it.

The spot ended with Bryan knocking Kane from the apron through the flames, while WWE personnel immediately attacked the fire with extinguishers. Everything was controlled enough to create the intended spectacle, but kayfabe makes the entire situation wonderfully ridiculous.

Someone had apparently stored combustible fuel underneath a wrestling ring during an event filled with electrical equipment, television production cables and thousands of spectators.

The fire extinguishers under there make perfect sense.

The thing creating the fire probably should not have been sitting beside them.

Wrestling has always required selective logic, especially when Kane is involved. Still, discovering emergency fuel beneath the ring exactly when the resident wrestling demon decides he wants a flaming table is suspiciously convenient even by WWE standards.

#3 — The Boogeyman and His Worm Supply

Finding another wrestler underneath the ring is nothing unusual. Finding The Boogeyman underneath there raises several additional concerns.

During his 2005-06 feud with Booker T, The Boogeyman repeatedly terrorized Booker and Sharmell with the combination that defined his WWE character: bizarre appearances, alarming behavior and an apparently bottomless supply of live earthworms.

One of the feud’s strangest moments came when Boogeyman emerged from underneath the ring and dragged Sharmell beneath it with him.

That means wrestling fans were being asked to contemplate considerably more than somebody hiding beneath the apron waiting for a cue.

This was The Boogeyman.

He was down there with worms.

The character’s entire existence made the space beneath the ring seem appropriately horrifying. Hornswoggle might live there, wrestlers might hide there and tables might be stacked there, but Boogeyman transformed it into the wrestling equivalent of whatever lives beneath a child’s bed.

The worms add the necessary detail. Carrying them to ringside was already disgusting enough, but imagining Boogeyman waiting in darkness beneath the ring while keeping live worms ready for his eventual appearance takes the concept somewhere more disturbing.

Booker T eventually had to follow the trail while trying to rescue Sharmell, making the underside of a standard WWE ring briefly function like the entrance to a horror movie.

Few wrestlers have ever made fans think this much about what might actually be underneath the canvas.

#2 — A Giant Mousetrap

Johnny Knoxville versus Sami Zayn at WrestleMania 38 abandoned any attempt to behave like a conventional professional wrestling match almost immediately.

That was exactly why it worked.

The Anything Goes Match became a live-action extension of Jackass, featuring an air horn, fire extinguisher, bowling ball, taser, giant mechanical kicking device, an enormous slapping hand and appearances from several members of the Jackass cast.

Then the crew went underneath the ring.

Late in the match, an enormous human-sized mousetrap was pulled out and pushed into the ring. Knoxville eventually trapped Zayn underneath it and scored the pinfall while the contraption held him against the mat.

There are several questions wrestling logic cannot comfortably answer.

How long had this enormous mousetrap been underneath the ring? Who assembled it? Did WWE’s ring crew have to carefully work around it while constructing the ring? Did nobody wonder why WrestleMania required pest control equipment large enough to capture Andre the Giant?

The beauty of the match was that none of those questions mattered.

Knoxville and Zayn had already established a world where anything could appear, and the audience understood that each trip underneath the ring existed solely to reveal something more absurd than the item before it.

The giant mousetrap was the perfect finishing touch because it was not simply another weapon.

It was an entire finishing mechanism.

Wrestling spent decades conditioning audiences to expect tables underneath the ring. Johnny Knoxville apparently decided there was enough room left over for something ACME would have shipped to Wile E. Coyote.

Honorable Mention — Wee Man

The same WrestleMania match produced one of the greatest under-the-ring reveals involving an actual human being.

Chris Pontius had already interfered when Sami Zayn went searching beneath the ring and instead discovered Wee Man. The Jackass star emerged, chased Zayn and eventually body slammed him in the middle of the ring to an enormous reaction.

The reveal was funny because Wee Man fit perfectly into professional wrestling’s long tradition of people inexplicably hiding under the canvas.

There was also some genuine commitment required. Wrestlers who make surprise appearances from beneath the ring often have to get into position well before the audience enters or sneak beneath it while the arena is darkened. Hornswoggle has discussed spending more than six hours underneath a WWE ring waiting for his cue.

Whether Wee Man endured anything comparable at WrestleMania is less important than the visual WWE created.

Zayn looked underneath expecting another weapon and found an angry member of the Jackass crew.

In a match where a giant hand, bowling ball and mousetrap were considered normal equipment, finding Wee Man was somehow only the honorable mention.

#1 — An Entire Little People’s Court

For years, WWE conditioned fans to accept Hornswoggle emerging from underneath the ring.

Then DX actually followed him down there.

On the December 21, 2009 episode of Raw, Triple H and Shawn Michaels were summoned to Little People’s Court after repeatedly mistreating Hornswoggle. Their instructions eventually led them to the ring, where Michaels concluded that the courtroom must be located underneath it.

DX crawled beneath the apron expecting the cramped darkness normally hidden from television cameras.

Instead, they found architecture.

After using DX glow sticks to navigate the darkness and discovering a light switch, Michaels and Triple H suddenly found themselves standing in what appeared to be a full-sized hallway. They walked through the underground complex until reaching a door labeled “Little People’s Court.”

Behind it was an actual courtroom. There was a judge, a bailiff, a jury, seating and Hornswoggle presenting evidence against DX. Michaels and Triple H were effectively placed on trial inside an apparently enormous judicial system located beneath a WWE wrestling ring.

This destroys every other candidate through sheer scale. A chainsaw takes up some room. A fuel can can sit beside a toolbox. Even Knoxville’s giant mousetrap could theoretically be disassembled.

WWE asked its audience to believe that underneath approximately 400 square feet of wrestling ring existed a hallway leading to a functioning courtroom filled with people.

The segment even acknowledged the impossibility. Triple H openly reacted to the revelation that all of this apparently existed beneath the ring, which somehow made the premise better rather than explaining anything.

Eventually, DX escaped the courtroom, traveled back through the mysterious underground world and climbed out from beneath the same ordinary-looking wrestling ring.

Professional wrestling frequently asks fans to suspend disbelief. Little People’s Court asked them to suspend basic geometry. There is no topping that.

The underside of a wrestling ring began as practical storage space and somehow became one of professional wrestling’s strangest recurring locations.

Wrestlers have retrieved virtually every object imaginable from beneath the apron because audiences eventually stopped questioning why weapons would be stored within immediate reach during a wrestling event. Once that happened, creative teams were free to push the concept as far as necessary.

Dean Ambrose could find a chainsaw. Kane could discover fuel exactly when he wanted to start a fire, while The Boogeyman could apparently occupy the darkness with a collection of worms until somebody wandered close enough to abduct.

Johnny Knoxville took the idea to its natural comedic extreme by treating the area like an unlimited Jackass supply closet. Even that could not compete with WWE deciding the space beneath its ring contained an entire functioning society.

Little People’s Court remains the champion because it did more than reveal something ridiculous underneath the ring.

It redefined what “underneath the ring” apparently meant.

After watching Triple H and Shawn Michaels walk through a hallway into a courtroom beneath approximately three feet of elevated canvas, a hidden table suddenly seems completely reasonable.

Research included archival and historical material from WWE.com, Sports Illustrated, PWTorch and contemporary event coverage of Raw, WrestleMania 32, Extreme Rules 2014 and WrestleMania 38.