5 rare pro wrestling moves that WWE should start using
There’s a saying going around about modern wrestling fans: they don’t want to see wrestling, they want to see wrestling moves. They aren’t interest in chain grappling or fancy transitions; they want to see their favourite stars hit their biggest moves on each other. And nowhere is this more apparent than with the finishing moves used by today’s WWE Superstars.
A wrestler’s finisher is their most important move because it allows them to distinguish themselves from their peers. Without a unique finisher, a wrestler is left to wander the dreaded midcard without much hope of escaping.
WWE’s roster is a perfect case study for this matter. Everyone knows the finishers belonging to AJ Styles, John Cena, Charlotte, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, and other top stars. But for each one of these recognizable finishers, there are ten wrestlers that suffer from an unoriginal or boring finisher.
How many of you can name the finishing move of Chad Gable, Bobby Roode, Tyler Breeze, Liv Morgan, Mandy Rose or Karl Anderson? Not likely, mainly because these wrestlers (and many more in WWE) lack a recognizable finisher.
WWE recently rectified this issue with one wrestler: Sonya Deville, who recently started using a much better finisher in the Shouten, which had been previously used by NJPW wrestler Hirooki Goto.
Although it wasn’t as good as Goto’s, it still brought her much more attention than before, especially since her previous finisher was some type of kick. That old move was boring and unoriginal, especially since so many WWE superstars use some kind of kick to win their matches.
So with WWE making a positive change for Sonya Deville with this move, here are some other rarely-seen wrestling moves that should be introduced to their wrestlers.
#5. The Folding Powerbomb
This is one of the most ‘logical’ moves ever used. It’s a Powerbomb, but with an added twist on its ending. Whenever most wrestlers try to pin their opponent after hitting a Powerbomb, they either land a jackknife pin (i.e. flipping over their opponent while hooking their legs), or doing a traditional pin.
The Folding Powerbomb is different because the wrestler hits the Powerbomb before immediately lying on top of their opponent. In doing so, the user puts all of their body weight onto their opponent, making it much harder for that person to kick out.
It’s a doubly-difficult move because the wrestler being pinned has to deal with both the damage from a Powerbomb and deal with a wrestler pushing all of their weight down on the person that had just been driven down to the mat with significant force.
With WWE trying to bring some legitimacy to their product, adding this move to one of their wrestler’s arsenals would be a great start.