then he attacked the thing with a saxon style 2 handed axe (or at least some type of big war axe, it was a few years ago when i watched it) and i'm pretty sure i remember the shield being completely smashed into splinters. i wouldn't have wanted to have my arm behind that shield at the moment of its demise.
You'd sure rather your shield was smashed into splinters than your arm.

Anyway, such a test ignores the fact that the shield was not infact, completely stationary so he could hit it dead on. The guy using the shield would be swinging it around, turning it, defelcting your blows with it, etc, doing what he could to prevent you from getting a good solid dead on center smashing hit.

If shields were so awful, the roman legions wouldn't have used such honking big ones for so many years with such success.