10 Early Wrestler Finishers You Totally Forgot About

6. Mick Foley - Cactus Elbow

Long before he debuted as Mankind in the WWF and began the long, tortuous climb to WWF championship gold, the gimmick that got Foley over was the unhinged wildman character Cactus Jack. Wrestling for various independent promotions across the US, he developed a reputation for doing what the other guys wouldn't, one facet of which centred around his finish, an elbow drop off the ring apron onto a prone opponent on the concrete floor outside.

He'd also utilise a stump piledriver for those less showy occasions when a match would actually end in the ring. The WWF's rules against the piledriver didn't come in until around the year 2000, after numerous issues including the infamous incident with Owen Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1997: nonetheless, in typical style Vince McMahon reinvented Foley's character upon his debut with them as Mankind, and this included rewriting his finish. The piledriver remained a transitional move in his repertoire.