Finishing Moves

Reading Wrestling

The wrestling readers are back again, here on episode 5, discussing a favorite topic for wrestling fans: finishing moves. Much like every comic book character or superhero comes equipped with her or his special power, so too does every wrestler have a finishing move. Meant as a punctuation to the long sentence of a match, the finisher is intended to be climactic, the essence of a wrestler’s persona distilled into a single act of aggression.
Finishers can be brute power moves, they can be lithe acts of agility, or even carnival-esque contortions. On this episode of Reading Wrestling, we’ll discuss the stunning, the cutting, the confusing, and everything in between in the vast arsenal of finishers.

We open with the question of our favorite finishing moves of all time. Noell take us to the Undertaker's "Tombstone" and discuss how it fits into the overall character. And Dave reminds us of the move's roots in Don Muraco's "Hawaiian Hammer." This takes Noell down the history rabbit hole of the DDT, dating it to well before Jake "The Snake" Roberts made it famous. We discuss the naming of wrestling moves and how that naming converts shared wrestling culture into claimed, copyrighted, and fixed intellectual property.
We move from there to a discussion of submission moves as a category of finishers, and Chris takes us back to the carnival, catch-as-catch-can roots of the practice. We even discuss tag-team finishers, including the Road Warriors' Doomsday Device finisher, the Dudley's 3D, the Young Bucks' Superkick Party.
Of course, the supremely climactic finishers of yesteryear lose their luster over time as they become more familiar. We talk about moves that were once considered devastating but have since been relegated to the ranks of stock moves or altogether forgotten. The conversation moves to the topic of banned or discontinued moves, eschewed for the legitimate physical damage the moves did to the performers.
The conversation (d)evolves into talking about the...*checks notes*...Armpit Claw? Anyway...
You won't want to miss this lights-out episode. We'll take you on a crawl through it all, from the Worm through the Cobra!