10 Wrestlers Who Could No Longer Perform Their Finisher
Apollo Crews, The Undertaker, and other wrestlers with enforced finisher switches.
Transcript
00:00 Sometimes, life sucks.
00:02 I mean, if you're a wrestler and have a badass finisher and one day you can't do it anymore,
00:06 you're not going to be a happy bear.
00:08 You're going to be a sad panda and have to pivot to something else.
00:12 Then you gotta get that over.
00:13 It's tough.
00:14 This happens all the time in wrestling though, so in case you missed it, I'm Simon from WhatCulture,
00:18 please do subscribe.
00:19 And this is 10 Wrestlers Who Could No Longer Perform Their Finish.
00:23 10.
00:24 The Undertaker Before Mark Calloway was The Undertaker, he
00:26 was learning his trade and had a very cool trick up his arsenal.
00:29 Dubbed the "heat-seeking missile", when he had tippy-toed to the middle of the ring,
00:34 he would leap off the rope and wham his opponents with an elbow drop.
00:37 Now this was impressive given his size, but in terms of making you go "holy crap, it didn't
00:41 cut it".
00:42 Even then he still pondered about using it when he made the jump to the WWE in 1990 before
00:47 he realised that was never going to work given he's meant to be an undead zombie.
00:51 This is when the Tombstone was suggested, which was, let's face it, one of the greatest
00:56 finishes ever.
00:57 I mean, seriously, try and think of a better one.
01:00 You can't.
01:01 9.
01:02 Seth Rollins Seth Rollins has had nothing but good finishes.
01:05 In FCW he used the Phoenix Splash, then moved to the main roster where he incorporated the
01:09 curb stomp, then the pedigree, then that running knee thing.
01:12 His execution was always so good because he made them look like death.
01:15 That, however, soon became a problem for one Vince McMahon when the origins of the stomp
01:20 came to light.
01:21 Tying into a vicious scene in the movie American History X, Vince realised that kids may start
01:26 doing this in their own backyards and therefore it had to go.
01:29 I do kinda get this as anybody discussing it in mainstream media made it sound like
01:32 the worst thing on the planet, but the fallout was quite the outcry from the fans.
01:37 Therefore we eventually came to a compromise.
01:40 Rollins could do the move again, but the curb part had to go.
01:43 So if you ever wondered why from nowhere it was just called the stomp, now you know.
01:48 8.
01:49 Scott Steiner Because he's nuts, everybody has forgotten
01:51 how good early Scott Steiner was in the ring.
01:53 I mean, he was a tank from day one, but he could still fly around the place and honestly
01:58 was a marvel.
01:59 Don't worry about his peaks, watch his array of suplexes instead.
02:02 This was the same when he teamed with Brother Rick too as they went on to become one of
02:05 the best tag teams ever, and with all that under his belt, Scottie took it further with
02:09 one move, the Flankensteiner.
02:12 He would use this regardless of the theme of the promotion and get wows every time,
02:16 all the while ensuring he earned his nickname of the genetic freak because that's exactly
02:20 what he was.
02:21 The problem was he did this for two decades straight to the point his back essentially
02:24 gave out on him.
02:25 Because of course it did.
02:26 Throw in that at the turn of the century he also started to suffer from drop foot and
02:30 something had to give, or in this case, stopping using the Frankensteiner as his finish.
02:35 It's why the Steiner-A-Kleiner moved to the front of the queue and wouldn't you
02:38 know it, this still looked badass because Scott was just a monster when applying it.
02:43 You gotta love the guy.
02:44 7.
02:45 Damien Priest Among all the rumours that Cody Rhodes was
02:48 indeed headed back to WWE, all of a sudden Damien Priest was no longer hitting his reckoning
02:53 finisher.
02:54 He switched to the Razor's Edge to apparently match his new attitude, but come on now, the
02:58 Crossroads was the exact same manoeuvre, so something had to give.
03:02 Kind of oddly this actually worked out because around the same time, very sadly, Scott Hall
03:06 passed away, who had helped Priest a lot, so him getting to do the same finish was a
03:10 nice nod to not only a legend, but somebody who Damien was happy to shout out.
03:14 Cody is winning matches with his version, so that is that, we're done, we can all
03:18 move on.
03:19 Truth then is not to pick a move that a bigger star may be using, because you can't win
03:24 that battle.
03:25 6.
03:26 Darren Young And if you want proof of that, right here.
03:28 This one is a little bit worse, as Mr. Young had only just picked this as his new finish
03:32 and tied it into a long-running story.
03:34 Then he got told, "Sorry Darren, that's a big nope."
03:38 Because after aligning himself with Bob Backlund so he could make himself great again, he was
03:42 bestowed the cross-face chicken wing that had served his mentor so well.
03:46 Bob had used that to become the WWF Champion, so this seemed like a positive step for somebody
03:51 wanting to climb the ladder.
03:53 When October 2017 rolled around and Oscar made the jump to the main roster, the powers
03:57 that be informed Young this was done because it was one of the former NXT Women's Champion's
04:02 major holds.
04:03 I do get this in the sense that The Empress of Tomorrow was gathering more steam, but
04:07 it still sucks for Young.
04:09 He had put so much effort into this only for it to all be thrown out the window before
04:12 it could get going.
04:14 He didn't stand a chance, which was doubly true when he was released later that year.
04:19 Really does seem unfair.
04:20 5.
04:21 Jon Moxley Jon Moxley has one hell of a DDT finish.
04:24 It always looks like it kills the guy, but this wasn't his plan when he first showed
04:28 up in the Shield.
04:29 Because before he did indeed move to the Dirty Deeds, the then-Dane Ambrose used a headlocked
04:34 driver that was actually kind of devastating when done right.
04:37 So much so, it was a surprise that WWE signed off on it.
04:40 As the name suggests, Ambrose would grab his opponent's head as if to give them a bulldog
04:44 before falling forward and spiking their head into the canvas.
04:48 As Mox would tell Fightful though, this move was great against the right guy, but in the
04:52 world of WWE where everybody is massive it just looked bad.
04:56 Apparently one on Randy Orton was particularly awkward, and we all know that hurting the
04:59 Viper is a very bad idea so we changed it up.
05:02 Jon has always said it was Joey Mercury who suggested the double arm DDT, and man did
05:06 he take that advice and run with it.
05:08 Not only is it better than ever, but he's got multiple versions as and when a match
05:13 needs it.
05:14 4.
05:15 Chris Jericho
05:16 There was no way Chris Jericho was only ever going to have one finishing move throughout
05:19 his career.
05:20 He's reinvented himself so many times, how he ended matches was going to shift with that
05:24 just defines the character.
05:26 But he returned after some time away from the WWE he did this, deciding to go with the
05:30 Codebreaker as opposed to the Lion Salt, which by that point had basically all but replaced
05:35 the walls of Jericho.
05:36 While this was all so smart due to it being relatively easier on the body, there was actually
05:40 a darker reason for this and it's not fun at all.
05:43 During a match for FMW, legendary wrestler Hayabusa had gone for Chris' famed Springboard
05:48 Moonsault, missed and landed so badly on his neck he paralysed himself.
05:53 This led to Jericho and WWE deciding maybe it was best to retire the move and come up
05:57 with something far easier for all, hence the above.
06:00 Wrestling is dangerous my friends, please stay safe out there.
06:03 3.
06:04 Apollo Crews
06:05 You may not know what Apollo Crews' finish is, that's not his fault, but WWE uses him
06:10 so infrequently it's easy to forget or question whether you knew to begin with.
06:14 But when he did arrive in NXT, Crews would finish opponents by hitting a press slam followed
06:18 by a backflip into a splash.
06:20 It was badass because it was flashy and Crews was ripped, but when Triple H saw this he
06:24 felt we needed to shift some things around or focus more on the power side of his arsenal.
06:30 That's why Apollo changed this to the spin out powerbomb as the game thought it was more
06:33 benefiting of his look and the fact that he was a heel at the time.
06:36 It wasn't the worst idea as that move is also great, but it is weird that Crews was told
06:41 to tone down his agility.
06:43 The man could spin and fly like nobody's business.
06:46 2.
06:47 Tyler Rex
06:48 Now Gabby Tuff did more power to her, but then Tyler Rex was not a big fan of John Cena.
06:53 Yes you heard that correctly.
06:55 When she was competing in a WWE ring though, Tuff would often use the burning hammer as
06:59 a finish after a suggestion by Arn Anderson.
07:02 For those that don't know, this was essentially an inverted attitude adjustment and Rex was
07:06 on it for a solid year.
07:07 When she botched it one night however against Primo on a house show, Tuff was pulled aside
07:12 by Cena and criticised for using the move and even told off for deliberately ulting
07:16 what John did.
07:17 I mean, who wants to tell him?
07:19 As Gabby said in 2014 when talking to Wrestling Inc, Cena said she had to find an alternative
07:25 or be fired.
07:26 You'll be surprised to hear Tuff change this, although I'm not sure it helped her too much
07:30 in the long run because soon after, she was released.
07:33 1.
07:34 Triple H
07:35 Are you ready for this?
07:36 In a different universe, the master of the diamond cutter is none other than Triple H.
07:41 For you see, when he arrived in the WWF as Hunter Hearst Helmsley, he wasn't smashing
07:46 people with the pedigree and was indeed using this version of the cutter.
07:49 He called it the Pedigree Pandemonium or so it is said, which is the worst name for anything
07:54 ever.
07:55 As Triple H explained in 2019, he stopped it because DDP asked him to.
08:00 Page had started to use it just before this and didn't want it to be overexposed, and
08:04 as they were buddies, he called in a favour.
08:06 Triple H had no issues with this at all and instead started dropping people on their face
08:09 in a completely different way.
08:11 And there was that one guy who got slammed right onto his head that still looks horrible.
08:17 Know of any wrestlers that had to change their finishing move?
08:20 Please do let us know in the comments below and don't forget to like the video, share
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