10 Wrestling Moves Banned By WWE

Seth Rollins’ former finisher, and the most recently banned move, one which almost seems inexplicable. Certainly the name is distasteful, but WWE has re-branded controversial moves in the past without batting an eye (hey kids, ask an older fan what John Cena’s finishers used to be called). Arguably, it’s even a ridiculously easy move to take safely, as it allows the opponent to cushion their fall with their arms, and even turn their head to lessen the impact. However, WWE’s official policy is that it’s a move which targets the head, and with increased attention being paid to concussions, they chose to remove that move from common use. In the end, it’s hard to complain about them protecting their workers, no matter what the reason.

http://www.sportskeeda.com/slideshow/5-reasons-why-wwe-banning-the-curb-stomp-is-ridiculous Source: sportskeeda.com

A classic finisher, and possibly the very first move ever explicitly banned by WWE, after a mistake by Owen Hart accidentally broke the neck of rising star “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. The injury put Austin on the shelf for a year at the height of his popularity, and likely led to his retirement at a relatively early age. There are several versions of the Piledriver, but all of them basically involve turning your opponent upside down, and driving them into the mat head-first. Jerry Lawler is one of the most well-known users of the traditional Piledriver in his career, and a modified (and slightly safer) version would be the Tombstone used by The Undertaker and Kane (the Tombstone is not banned, but only used on special occasions, and so much caution is used that the wrong camera angle can easily show that a Tombstone recipient’s head never comes close to hitting the mat). Banning the Piledriver was the beginning of WWE’s attempts to find ways to prevent serious neck injuries, a situation which they continue to monitor to this day.

https://torrentbutler.eu/125575-wwe-tombstone-the-history-of-the-undertaker Source: torrentbutler.eu

This move has only ever truly been performed on the big stage by one man, Petey Williams, formerly of TNA. The move is a difficult one to perform and actually requires a significant amount of athleticism on the part of both wrestlers involved, which would already be a strike against it being performed regularly on WWE programming. If you can’t hit it on some of the super heavyweights that roam WWE’s rings, it’s not the most effective finisher. At any rate, the Destroyer is a piledriver that is performed by setting an opponent up as if you’re going to deliver a powerbomb, then diving over their back, forcing them to flip backwards with your legs, into a piledriver finish. You can probably guess the main reason why this move was banned before ever being seen in WWE, since we used the word “piledriver” twice while describing it. Arguably, it’s not the most dangerous piledriver variant, since the flipping involved removes most of the downward impact of the move, but the added complexity also makes it easier to screw up.

http://gifsoup.com/view/1025197/canadian-destroyer.html Source: gifsoup.com

Popularized by “Sugar” Shane Helms in the last days of WCW (Helms would go on to slightly larger fame as superhero character The Hurricane in WWE), the Vertebreaker was as complex and dangerous as it sounds, essentially holding your opponent upside down on your back, then dropping to the ground, forcing them to land on their head, neck, and shoulders. The move requires a ridiculous set-up to pull off and can really only be successfully performed on smaller wrestlers, due to the combination of strength and leverage required to hold someone upside down on your back. Clearly, perfect timing is also required to prevent injury, and the margin for error is incredibly thin, since you can’t directly see the wrestler you’re performing the move on. It’s a move that probably never should have been invented, and it was no great loss when WWE added it to the banned list almost instantly.

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Dick Murdoch is credited with innovating the Brainbuster and bringing it into popular use, and it saw an increase in popularity in the modern era as a more brutal version of a suplex. After lifting your opponent up as if for a standard vertical suplex, you instead drop straight down, forcing them to land mainly on their shoulders and neck. A modified and reasonably safer version of a Brainbuster can be seen in the Jackhammer, a trademark move of Goldberg, where instead of dropping straight down, the opponent is visibly pulled over, allowing them to land flat on their back. The move is banned in WWE due to the combination of the lack of control involved in a move where everyone is falling, in addition to the obvious problems with dropping someone on their neck from a significant height. In an interesting bit of trivia, in Japan (where ridiculously dangerous moves are rarely banned), the standard vertical suplex is actually referred to as a Brainbuster, while the head-and-neck version is called a “vertical drop Brainbuster”.

http://gifsoup.com/view/2833924/austin-aries-brainbuster.html Source: gifsoup.com

Hey, remember when Randy Orton used to kick people in the head and put them out for weeks with serious head injuries? In storyline, obviously, because the “punt”, as it was called, usually looked pretty weak. Clearly, they weren’t going to have Orton actually kick someone in the head full force, but it did tend to seem more like he was grazing them with his shin. At any rate, it used to be his most deadly move, even more dangerous than the RKO, and using it was a guaranteed match finisher. But then WWE decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to promote one of their top stars deliberately giving other wrestlers head injuries in this age of increased awareness of the dangers of concussions, and frankly, that’s probably a smart plan. These days, Orton may occasionally set up as if he’s about to punt his opponent into next week, usually in a long, brutal match on Pay Per View where he’s already tried every other method of victory, but you can almost certainly take it to the bank that he’ll be prevented from hitting the move successfully every single time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GETeK8ptPA Source: YouTube.com

After Brock Lesnar nearly sent himself to the hospital attempting a Shooting Star Press at WrestleMania XIX (arguably, Brock had performed the move repeatedly in developmental, but never before in WWE), the move landed itself on the banned list. The move is already a high-risk endeavour due to being of the top rope variety, but the fact that it’s very easy to either over or under-rotate, combined with an inability to see where you’re landing until just before impact, meant that it had a significantly higher potential for causing injury. Indeed, other wrestlers known for attempting the SSP, notably WCW and WWE Superstar Billy Kidman, often received criticism for being “sloppy” when performing it (Kidman had it turned into a story line where he was afraid to perform the move after legitimately injuring Chavo Guerrero during a match when he drove his knees into Chavo’s neck). Exceptions have been made to this ban over the years, when dedicated performers have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can hit it safely and consistently, including Evan Bourne and, most recently, Neville, whose Red Arrow is an even more complicated twisting version of the move. Additionally, Superstars such as John Morrison have performed a standing version of the SSP, which is significantly safer due to being performed from a grounded position.

http://mindofcarnage.com/2015/10/22/who-told-brock-lesnar-to-do-the-shooting-star-press-at-wrestlemania-xix/ Source: mindofcarnage.com

The Pedigree, clearly, is a legitimately dangerous move, as it drives a wrestler face-first into the mat, while hooking the arms to prevent them from cushioning the blow. While the wrestler’s head is theoretically positioned high enough that it shouldn’t come into contact with the ground, one mistake could be the difference between performing the move correctly, and a serious injury. It should be no surprise, therefore, that the original version of Triple H’s Pedigree was quickly banned by WWE, especially after some isolated incidents where wrestlers failed to take the move correctly and hurt themselves in the process. As a result, the move which Triple H would make famous and which Seth Rollins uses today is a modified version, in which the wrestler delivering the move releasing their opponent’s arms well before impact, allowing them to use their arms to hit first, preventing the possibility of the neck and head slamming into the mat at a high speed.

https://tommygirard.wordpress.com/2015/03/ Source: tommygirard.wordpress.com

This move is so dangerous that it has only been performed a handful of times professionally, all by the same wrestler, and never in WWE. In concept, the move is similar to John Cena’s Attitude Adjustment, a fireman’s carry slam. The difference is that the wrestler taking the move starts by laying on his back across his opponent’s shoulders, rather than on his front, and instead of flipping over to land in a typical back bump, is dropped straight down to the side, usually landing on the shoulders, head, and neck. The move was pioneered by Kenta Kobashi, considered one of the greatest Japanese wrestlers in history (and the mentor of Kenta Kobayashi, who now wrestles in WWE as Hideo Itami), and even he recognized how dangerous the move was, only using it seven times in his entire career. Former WWE Superstar Tyler Reks briefly used a heavily modified and much safer version which was also called a Burning Hammer, but it was not the same move used by Kobashi.

http://gifsoup.com/view/1391723/kobashi-burning-hammer.html Source: gifsoup.com

Admittedly, this isn’t actually a wrestling move, but the rise of hardcore wrestling that came along with the Attitude Era saw a drastic increase in the number of chair shots. What was once an extremely rare event became a nightly occurrence, and as the frequency of chair shots increased, so did the number it could take to end a single match. Everyone remembers the infamous “I Quit” match at the 1999 Royal Rumble, where Mankind took a ridiculous number of completely unprotected shots to the head as a part of the finish to the match, and the terrifying footage from the Beyond The Mat documentary which showed the effect it had on Mick Foley (and his family). When concussion research came to the forefront following the Chris Benoit incident, chair shots to the head were (quite rightly) singled out as a major contributor to health problems in professional wrestlers. Even “protected” head shots, where a wrestler attempts to block the chair with their forearms, is fairly dangerous due to problems with correctly timing the shot, which could lead to a wrestler still taking some (or even all) of the blow to their head and neck. Over the years, WWE has both reduced the overall use of chair shots in matches, and banned head shots, which is why every chair shot you will see these days is delivered to the flat of a wrestler’s back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ikhtiar_Hossain/sandbox Source: en.wikipedia.org