10 Finishing Moves That Never Made It To WWE

When 'Sugar' Shane Helms first arrived in WWE during the infamous WCW InVasion, conspicuous by his absence were his first name, his nickname, his valets and his finishing move, the Vertebreaker. Not to be defeated, Helms sharply reinvented himself with a new name and persona as the Green Lantern-inspired Hurricane. However, the Vertebreaker, the double undertook back-to-back Piledriver he popularized in the US, was irretrievable.

While Helms had never injured anyone with the move, invented by Japanese wrestler Megumi Kudo, it was unquestionably one of the most dangerous-looking manoeuvres in all of wrestling. For a brief period Helms, as the Hurricane, dusted off the Vertebreaker, but it was quickly abandoned in favour of a much less daunting spinning headlock elbow drop, the Eye of the Hurricane.

Today the Vertebreaker lives on in the repertoire of Homicide, whose version is affably entitled the Cop Killer or Gringo Killer, depending on his employer.