Did You Know?
At the King of the Ring in 2001, Kurt Angle and Shane McMahon fought each other in a grueling street fight. One of the stand out moments from this match were the infamous belly-to-belly suplexes that Kurt Angle gave to Shane McMahon into the glass King of the Ring entrance stage. Each time Angle would try to suplex Shane through the glass, the glass would NOT break, resulting in some brutal falls onto the skull of Shane McMahon. Eventually, it did break. But why didn’t it break as easy as both competitors expected?

Kurt Angle, in an interview with RF Video, points out that the glass used for the KOTR stage was NOT sugar glass (which is what they expected). You may notice that there was no pyro used for that show in any of the entrances. That was because Vince McMahon did not want the pyro to shake the glass and end up with it shattering. The glass they ended up using, though, was PLEXIGLASS, which definitely wouldn’t have broken from any rumbles from pyro, etc. There was a mix-up in the ordering of the glass and they ended up trying to break through plexiglass. 

When Kurt Angle threw Shane through the other side of the stage, he was supposed to suplex him. But, by that point, they were both pretty banged up. Kurt Angle had screwed up his tailbone from a suplex that Shane had given him on the floor before the belly-to-belly suplexes. So, Shane went right threw the glass, cutting himself up in the process. Kurt was also cut up, as the glass fell down as it shattered and cut up his arm and back quite badly.

Both men ended up in the hospital that night.