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Imagine yourself as a professional wrestler. You’re a competitor that seeks to win as many matches as possible, and you have one move that you trust to end your matches for you. That move is your finisher, and you can rely on it to help you win no matter what.
However, over time, your finisher starts to lose its effectiveness. Other wrestlers start finding out ways to reverse or escape your finisher, while others kick out of it when you actually land it. At this point, you have two options when wrestling in a match.
You can either, a) go down the John Cena route and keep hitting your move over and over again, despite there being diminishing returns in using the same move over and over again; or you can b) come up with a new and more powerful or dangerous move that you save for only the strongest of opponents and most difficult of situations.
If you chose option B, you’ve come to understand the concept behind super-finishers. These are the rarest of finishers that wrestlers only use when they’re desperate to win, or because these moves are far more dangerous than the wrestler’s regular moves.
You aren’t likely to see any of these moves in a WWE ring, mostly because they’re so dangerous. While there’s always an allure to seeing a wrestler perform something super-dangerous that could have serious consequences for the poor soul stuck taking such a move, there’s also an inherent thrill in seeing a story take a different turn with the introduction and use of a super-finisher.
Here are the ten greatest super finishers in wrestling history.
#10 Kevin Owens’ Apron Powerbomb
Kevin Steen/Owens has long been known as one of the most vicious and remorseless wrestlers whenever he has gone. He has been willing to go to great lengths to hurt his opponents (for storyline purposes), and one of the moves he has done many times to show his ruthlessness is the Apron Powerbomb.
Though not something he tends to use in matches (he usually saves it for beatdowns and non-match segments), it is still a vicious-looking move that always gets a reaction from crowds. That’s because the apron is much harder than the ring between the ropes, so any impact on the apron is likely to hurt much more.
Add to this the force behind Owens’ powerbomb and you have a devastating super-finisher that would definitely put someone on the shelf or keep them for a 3-count during an actual wrestling match.
#9 Brock Lesnar's Kimura Lock
Brock Lesnar’s approach to wrestling over the past six years has been to be as simplistic as possible. People complain that Cena only has ‘five moves of doom’, but Lesnar exemplifies this issue much more than Cena.
Lesnar uses only a handful of different moves: various strikes, the German Suplex, the Belly-to-Belly Suplex (on rare occasions), the F-5 (to end most of his matches), and the Kimura Lock as his super-finisher.
The Kimura is a more believable and realistic finisher for Lesnar because it has its origins in MMA. But Lesnar doesn’t use the F-5 all the time; he only saves it either for moments when he needs to hurt someone or send a special message, or for situations when his regular F-5 finisher can’t keep someone down.
Since the F-5 it itself one of the most protected finishers in WWE, it takes an exceptionally strong and tough person to kick out of Lesnar’s F-5. And when they do, they have the misfortune of finding themselves locked in Brock’s Kimura Lock, with little hope of escaping.
#8 Finn Balor's 1916/Bloody Sunday
Although he’s a small man by comparison to most WWE superstars, Finn Balor compensates for this by having a wide array of powerful moves in his arsenal. Though he finishes most of his matches with a diving double foot stomp, he does use a few other moves in desperate situations.
One of those moves is the 1916, known outside of WWE as ‘Bloody Sunday’. This move is technically called a single underhook brainbuster, which means that he lifts his opponent for a brainbuster while hooking one of their arms. A normal brainbuster is still dangerous because the wrestler taking the move is vertical before being dropped on their head or neck/shoulders.
But the 1916/Bloody Sunday is even more dangerous because Balor hooks one of their arms, preventing that wrestler from making full use of the shoulder, thus increasing the damage on Balor’s opponent’s head/neck.
We’re not likely to see this move on a regular basis in WWE, which makes it the perfect candidate for a super-finisher for Balor to use in his biggest matches.
#7 John Cena’s Avalanche/Top Rope Attitude Adjustment
As strong as John Cena is, the Attitude Adjustment doesn’t look like that painful of a wrestling move. After all, it looks like a basic ‘back bump’ that almost anyone can do in any martial arts class (the fireman’s carry is a very simple move taught in many martial arts disciplines).
While Cena’s AA did bring him much success over the years, the move became overused and ineffective over time, especially since Cena would do the move twice or thrice in a single match. From a psychology standpoint, this makes the AA weak, as it becomes harder to believe the move as effective if the first one could be kicked out of so easily.
This is why Cena added a super-finisher element to his matches beginning in mid-2015. The Attitude Adjustment from the top rope is a more powerful version of his standard AA and has much more power behind it due to gravity giving the impact extra force.
Although it might look impractical and might be awkward to set up, one cannot deny that this move has been a much-needed addition to ‘Big Match John’s’, well, big matches.
6. KENTA’s Ura/Inverted Go 2 Sleep
KENTA, a.k.a. Hideo Itami created one of the most famous finishing moves of the past decade: the Go 2 Sleep, a fireman’s carry dropped into a knee lift to the face. This move brought him immense popularity both in his native Japan and internationally (so much so that CM Punk started using the move in WWE).
That move is incredibly popular, but it lost its effectiveness due to overuse over the years. To fix this problem, KENTA came up with a variation of this move that he saved for only the most difficult of situations: the Inverted GTS. Instead of a knee to the face, KENTA would pick his opponent up in a torture rack and then drop them and knee them in the back of the head/neck.
This move looked just as dangerous as the original (if not more so) and brought KENTA just as much success as his original Go To Sleep.
#5 Randy Orton's Punt Kick
There was a time when Randy Orton was WWE’s most vicious and remorseless heel, which is a moniker he earned by kicking people in the head as hard as possible. When the RKO wasn’t enough to keep his opponent down, Orton would execute a running punt kick to a supine opponent’s head, knocking them out (in storyline).
This move was built up as a super-finisher in the sense that he didn’t use it as often as his regular RKO finisher, saving it for only the most difficult of opponents and to send as strong of a message as possible. That booking worked for a long time, and the punt kick was soon considered one of the most dangerous and devastating moves in WWE.
Sadly, WWE banned the move in recent years, most likely due to how there’s a higher chance of WWE fans using a move like this on each other, despite WWE’s obvious warnings to never do these moves at home.
#4 The Undertaker's Spike/Leaping Tombstone Piledriver
For over twenty-five years, the Undertaker’s Tombstone Piledriver has been considered one of the most powerful and dangerous finishers in all of pro wrestling. There’s something simple yet devastating in seeing him pick someone up, flip them upside down and then drive them down to the mat.
For most of his career, the Undertaker knelt down when executing the Tombstone. This was done to protect his knees, and he sometimes delayed the impact by controlling his kneel to build up the anticipation of the move’s impact. But there have been a few occasions on which the Undertaker added some extra power to his signature Tombstone by leaping/jumping instead of kneeling.
By making this slight modification, the Tombstone became an even more powerful move. The best example of this move being used was at WrestleMania XXVI, when ‘Taker used a Leaping Tombstone on Shawn Michaels to pin him after a ‘regular’ Tombstone that he used earlier wasn’t enough to win the match.
#3 The Steiner Screwdriver
The 1990s was a decade of incredible innovation in pro wrestling moves, and this was one of them. Back when Scott Steiner was still teaming with his brother Rick, he had one of the craziest moves ever seen as his super-finisher.
The Steiner Screwdriver is basically a vertical suplex into a sitting Tombstone Piledriver. Steiner would show off his power by lifting his opponent in a delayed vertical suplex, and then in a split second would let go of them and drop them into a sitting Tombstone Piledriver.
Many people consider this to be one of the most dangerous moves of all time, especially after what a regular, non-vertical suplex variation of the move did to ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. For Steiner to have used this move regularly throughout his career is a testament to his skill as a pro wrestler.
#2 The Tiger Driver '91
A standard Tiger Driver is a relatively simple move to execute while also being quite safe. It starts off as a Pedigree, but instead of dropping straight down, the victim is dropped into a Powerbomb. As long as the victim rotates enough, they don’t have to worry about serious injury or severe damage.
The same cannot be said for this variation of the move.
Made famous by Japanese legend Mitsuharu Misawa, the Tiger Driver ’91 changes things by adding a spike to the move. Instead of allowing the victim to rotate onto their backs, the user locks their arms and drives them straight down onto their head, neck and shoulders. It’s an extremely dangerous move because the wrestler has to land on their neck and shoulders with little in terms of protection.
Misawa used the move extensively throughout the 1990s, and in that time, only one person ever kicked out of it: Kenta Kobashi, himself a legendary wrestler and the creator of arguably the best super-finisher of all time.
#1 The Burning Hammer
The last time this move was seen was during the 2016 WWE Cruiserweight Classic. It was a surprise move brought out by Brian Kendrick as he tried to defeat Kota Ibushi. Shockingly, the move didn’t lead to a pin, which was as shocking as the move being used in the first place.
You see, the Burning Hammer was, up to that point, considered by many people to be both the most dangerous finisher in all of wrestling and the perfect finisher. The reason for this second claim was because the move’s most prolific user, Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi, used it only seven times in his career, and it always led to a pin when he did so.
That makes the Burning Hammer arguably the single-greatest wrestling move in the entire world: when done properly, it has a 100% chance of leading to a win for the user. As for Kota Ibushi, he proved that he has superhuman endurance when he kicked out of this terrifying move.
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