Are lions really afraid of kitchen chairs?

There is some indication that [Clyde] Beatty was the first lion tamer to use a chair in his act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Beatty


When Clyde Beatty made his debut about a century later, he used a whip, a gun and a chair to command his cats. You might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion. It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair [source: Morris]. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off.

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/lion-taming2.htm

If someone was waving a chair in YOUR face, wouldn't you pause to reflect?