A wrestler’s finisher is his or her prized move. It should be protected and marketed as their choice tool for maximum devastation. Yet recently, wrestlers find themselves needing to execute the same signature move multiple times in the same match to put away their opponent. What gives?
Jim Ross, one of the greatest commentators in this business, addressed this very topic on his blog recently. To say the least, he’s not happy about the trend of cheapening one’s own finisher…
“What started the trend that it takes a main event level talent using their finish MULTIPLE times on another top hand to win a match? Why is that lame trend on going? If one has to use their vaunted finish multiple times to beat another talent then is is really one’s finish?”
The recent main event of WWE’s Night Of Champions offers us an example of this. John Cena delivered four AAs and multiple STFs in his pursuit to defeat Brock Lesnar and reclaim the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. While he was declared the winner of the match, he failed to win the Title due to interference by Seth Rollins.
“If the in ring psychology was more refined and made more common sense, we wouldn’t be seeing someone have to take another’s go to finish multiple times to lose. For those who think that matter helps a match then they are out of touch with the genre. It’s all about protecting the loser obviously instead of it being all about getting the winner truly over.”
Do you agree with JR’s take? Do current wrestlers tend to overuse their finishing maneuvers, overexposing them in the process? Comment below with your thoughts and let me know.
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Mitch Nickelson's Wrestling Blog 
AN F-5 TO CENA.
ANOTHER F-5 TO CENA.
OH LOOK ANOTHER F-5 TO CENA.
DID WE MENTION ANOTHER F-5 TO CENA.
HEY L–
You get the picture. It’s just a glorified, harder to pull off move which does “more damage” than others.
Whenever I played fighting games like Tekken, the “finishers” were just exceptionally good, big moves. Oddly enough, that’s a -fighting- game, not a -wrestling- match. He’s 100% right, it’s important to establish how critical these moves are!
See, whilst I don’t consider it a “wrestling move”, the Big Shows Knock Out Punch is still the -MOST- believable finisher. Why? No one except for Sheamus (from what I’ve seen) has gotten back up from it. It’s simple, but well done. Also, some of the punches look pretty cool… Other times it looks like a pillow hitting you 🙂
Another great article Mitch!
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I remember when Tank Abbott came to WCW and he did his “One Punch Tank” thing and I HATED it, haha. I was young and didn’t watch MMA or boxing, so something so simple just seemed dumb to me. It was ignorant on my part, but I definitely can appreciate the more realistic moves these days.
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As I mentioned: It’s not a wrestling move to me. I don’t think it deserves to be there. Having said that – It’s “Devastating” and it’s stuck that way.
I like consistency! 🙂
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