10 Wrestlers Who Could No Longer Perform Their Finisher
Apollo Crews, The Undertaker, and other wrestlers with enforced finisher switches.
After decades of putting his body through Hell, Jeff Hardy has finally made the decision to change the way he executes the Swanton Bomb, reducing the risk to his back and spine and hopefully extending his career in the process.
This isn't the first time Jeff has switched up his finisher either. In 2018, he changed the way he delivered the move following shoulder surgery and even decided to drop the move altogether at house shows.
Despite the positive intentions behind the change, some fans of course decided to complain about Hardy's decision, arguing that top tier talents shouldn't make changes to their signature moves, no matter how small.
But Hardy isn't the only wrestler to do this. Whether it be a personality change, an injury or simply a character tweak, there have been countless wrestlers all over the world who have made changes to their move sets for a variety of reasons.
Even greats like Shawn Michaels and Randy Orton, wrestlers with two of the most iconic finishers of all time, started out with completely different signature moves. Proof if you needed it, that if you execute a move well enough, fans won't even remember how lame your old finisher actually was.
But which wrestlers were forced to make changes even when they might not have wanted to? Join us as we discover exactly what happened to the original Dirty Deeds, why we never see the Frankensteiner anymore, and why someone actually thought anybody could ever get over using an elbow drop as a finisher...
10. The Undertaker
If you’re a near seven-foot-tall undead monster you need a finishing move that fits your frightful façade. A hurricanrana for example would not befit such an imposing character. That’s why the Tombstone Piledriver worked so well for The Undertaker. But it wasn’t always the chosen finish for The Deadman.
When he first signed with the WWE, weeks before his official debut at the 1990 edition of Survivor Series, Undertaker toyed with the idea of using a very different finisher, one that he fortunately retired way before his Hall of Fame career ever really got going.
The so-called Heat Seeking Missile involved The Undertaker walking the top rope, much like he would do for Old School, and then instead of leaping off and landing a swift painful blow to his opponent’s twisted limbs, he would instead land a rather awkward-looking elbow drop on their lifeless body.
The move looked as bad as it sounds. Who came up with the name Heat Seeking Missile? Did they not get the memo that this character is essentially a zombie? Surely something like Death From Above would have been far more fitting? Anyway, WWE management obviously felt the same way because by the time The Undertaker was taking souls and digging holes on television, he was using the Tombstone.