10 Surprising Origins Of Your Favourite Wrestling Moves
The wrestling moves created by design, by mistake, and by a gag.
Let us break wrestling down into its key components. Person A attempts to make person B submit to their will or exhaust them by implementing a veritable bouquet of manipulations to their body. You know: they do hurty stuff to win.
It's this 'hurty stuff' that makes wrestling such a unique form of entertainment. Yes, professional athletes will occasionally have a kind of signature move like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 'sky hook' or Ronaldo's 'flop and fake an injury', but in wrestling it's a gosh darn requirement.
The problem with with being unique and innovative in wrestling is that there are only so many ways to manipulate a body without outright killing someone. It becomes harder and harder to trace just where and whom to credit with innovative moves, because the names of manoeuvres change or maybe one grappler just performs the combination better.
Scott Steiner, for example, is sometimes credited with inventing the 450 splash; at other times 2 Cold Scorpio is considered the innovator. Even if the matter is partially subjective, the entries that follow can make a strong case for being the originators of some of the most beloved and iconic moves in pro wrestling.
10. DDT: Black Gordman (The Move) & Jake Roberts (The Name)
The DDT is like the dive or suplex, in that it is a father move that has a stupid amount of variations or 'child' moves. The butterfly DDT, the Lucha DDT, the VINTAGE ORTON! - all of these are based on the classic technique of firmly face-locking the opponent and dropping to the mat.
Although the DDT was originally used by Black Gordman as something of a transition move, it was Jake The Snake Roberts who used the move as a finisher and gave the drop its famous three-lettered name.
According to Jake, he never actually meant to do the DDT. During a match when Jake had an opponent in a front face lock, his feet were stepped on, causing him to fall backwards. It was the reaction of the fans who gave a collective wince that made Jake use the move intentionally.
The name DDT is something of a mystery, though: WWE (formerly WWF) claimed it stood for Damien's Death Trap, although Jake states that he came up with the name after looking at a newspaper headline about the banning of the toxin DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, so yeah, definitely just call that DDT).
Gordman did invent the move, but ultimatly Jake branded it best.