Ahhh, pretty much the oldest running joke in the World Wrestling Federation.

The location is Omaha, Nebraska. The date is April 28, 1996. The Pay-Per-View event is In Your House: Good Friends, Better Enemies, and your hosts are Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler.

This was the last show for Kevin Nash (Diesel) and Scott Hall (Razor Ramon) before they jumped ship for World Championship Wrestling. In the main event, Diesel took on Shawn Michaels for the WWF Championship.

About halfway through the match, as Diesel is brutally pounding on Michaels, he powerbombs Shawn through the announce table as the announcers go absolutely batshit. Michaels stays down for about ten minutes. (This was immediately before Diesel steals Mad Dog Vachon's artificial leg and uses it as a foreign object, in case you were interested.)

Soon afterwards, the idea of having a Spanish Announce Table emerged—this way, the real announcers would still be able to keep working after the table was broken. Usually manned by Tito Santana and some other nameless Spanish guy, the Spanish table soon became a mainstay at WWF PPV events.

Just about every single PPV event since "Good Friends, Better Enemies" has seen at least one of the announce tables—usually the Spanish one—being broken.

It's become such a gag that many wrestlers themselves have parodied the whole thing, most notably one of The Rock's interviews leading up to his "I Quit" match with Mankind at Royal Rumble '99 (I'm paraphrasing slightly):

"And how is The Rock gonna make your candyass quit? We'll, we're gonna go down the line... a Rock Bottom here, a Corporate Elbow there... and then we're gonna go down the announce tables. French Announce Table... Spanish Announce Table... HO CHI MIN CHOW, Chinese Announce Table!"

They greatly weakened the announce table structure starting around '98, to the point where the table often breaks prematurely. Kurt Angle actually got minor head injuries when HHH botched a Pedigree on top of one of the announce tables sometime in 2000. They still keep doing it, though.


I have been correctly informed by holliman that the first time this spot was used was at Survivor Series '95, when Diesel powerbombed Bret Hart through the Spanish Announce Table. GFBE was a full five months later and was the one to start the streak going, which is why most people (myself included) remember it as the first time it happened.

The Spanish Announce Table can always be counted on these days for "Holy Shit" bumps. But what were the most memorable bumps? When did the table get broken then replaced then broken again? When were there table spots where the table just would not break? Well to answer these questions we're going to set the wayback machine to all sorts of points...for "The History of the Spanish Announce Table!" (insert musical flourish here)

Survivor Series, November 1995 - Diesel vs. Bret Hart: the actual bump in question wasn't a powerbomb, it was actually just a strategically-placed shove off the apron. Bret was walking around ringside attempting to catch a breath, when he made the boneheaded decision to climb up and stand on the apron in front of the tables and keep his eyes off of the ring. So Diesel, in his infinite wisdom, decided to run up and push him off the apron, where he made a nice landing into the SAT which broke in half more or less. Bret was pretty much playing a rag doll until the second attempt of a powerbomb by Diesel (Bret collapsed out of the first one) gave him a chance to roll him up for a pin. So Nash destroyed as much as possible to get his final WWF run as a heel going. Which culminated in...

In Your House: Good Friends, Better Enemies, April 1996 - Diesel vs. Shawn Michaels: The first finishing move-through-the-SAT spot, as previously mentioned by RimRod, there were actually a lot of sick bumps that Shawn took in this match, and a lot of people think that this was the match that established him as a credible world champ. It certainly established him as a premier bump machine. And boy did he bump at...

In Your House: Mind Games, September 1996 - Mankind vs. Shawn Michaels: Good ole' Mick Foley. It actually makes sense if they wanted to establish the previous two points with Shawn to put him in a match with the god of sickening bumps. And even though his best were yet to come, this provided a lot of great ones for both, of mention here is a suplex by Mick (who was on the apron) on Shawn from the top turnbuckle into the SAT. Meanwhile Shawn's "pal", Bret, took another nice bump at...

Survivor Series, November 1996 - Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin: This feud just had a killer build-up, save for one misstep, so we knew that we would get some kick ass matches out of it, including this one. They had a great part where they went into the crowd to brawl, where Austin more or less hotshotted Bret onto the SAT from over the guardrail, came over and punched him a few times then got up and landed an elbow from the apron. This war continued on, with a few more great table spots. But the next one in the WWF's history was at...

Royal Rumble, January 1997 - Ahmed Johnson vs. Farooq (Asad): I don't know if Ron Simmons had dropped the fake surname or not at this point. And just for variety this time they take it through a French announce table, but it's still the same principle. And yes this match blew. Table spot involved Ahmed powerbombing an unnamed member of Farooq's Nation of Domination through the table. Next up was "the grand daddy of them all"...

Wrestlemania 13, March 1997 - Sid vs. the Undertaker: A slightly unmemorable spot (Sid with a boot in the face that sends Taker over the top and into the SAT) in the face of Bret Hart's participation all night and the next night on RAW. Then of course this main event is pretty lousy as well. Let's move on shall we?

In Your House: Revenge of the Taker, April 1997 - Mankind vs. Undertaker: The 26216252th match in the Foley-Calloway feud. And it's a brutal one. The table bump is very Asmik Ace-esque (ya know, like No Mercy for N64), as Taker picks up the the ring stairs and smashes them into Mankind's head to knock Foley off the apron and thoroughly into a month from next Tuesday, with a nice headfirst dive into the SAT from Mick. And next we look at...

King of the Ring, June 1997 - Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Mankind: No, he wasn't quite the Game just yet, and didn't even do crotch chops. These two have probably gone to the table (either attacking or being attacked), more than anybody else. After a Nestea Plunge (which is brought up a number of times in Mick's book), Mick gets pedigreed through the SAT to further build the first of about 3 or 4 feuds with Triple H and further cement the Jim Ross-assisted face turn.

In Your House: Canadian Stampede, July 1997 - The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart, Owen Hart, The British Bulldog, Jim Neidhart and Brian Pillman) vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, Goldust, The Legion of Doom and Ken Shamrock: Well this PPV was notable on a bazillion levels, least of which being probably the best top to bottom card for a while. Also it was one where the Hart Foundation were massively cheered due to Bret's "Frenchy Martin with more hatred of the US, better english, and a lot of paranoia" gimmick, even though the paranoia wasn't really part of the gimmick. Well the bump here involves Brian Pillman in one of his last matches throwing Ken Shamrock into the SAT.

Ground Zero, September 1997 - Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels: The table bump was unremarkable (an Taker punch into the SAT on Shawn), but all the other activity was priceless, with both guys seemingly destroying about 40 referees when not beating up each other. It got so bad that they sent out some of the Superstars jobbers in ref shirts. I was kinda hoping that the multiple refs would suffer the wrath of the SAT. Adding to all this was that this was the night before Triple H and Shawn Michaels showed off the MSG KAYFABE-BREAKING FOOTAGE OF DOOM!~@~ (OF DOOM is ©Scott Keith, possibly), which started D-Generation X. Oh yeah, there was a rematch...

Badd Blood, October 1997 - Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels (Hell in the Cell): Considering the spectre of Brian Pillman's death earlier in the day, I found it pretty incredible that these guys could go like they did. And wow. This match was all about dangerous spots and Michaels bumping like a king. The best of which was where Taker was standing on the roof of the cell, and Michaels climbing down in an attempt to escape from the top, so Taker comes over and stomps on his hands until he falls off and crashes into the SAT. Taker jumps down and throws Shawn on top of the French table (which doesn't break), and even throws Shawn back into the wreck of the SAT for good measure. And well, the Undertaker was just unstoppable, at least until Kane made his debut at the end of the match.

I'll add more to this later.

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