10 Most BRUTAL Looking Finishers In Wrestling Today
In which Will Ospreay attempts to decapitate Kota Ibushi with his elbow.
In professional wrestling, a finishing move is intended to be your final action of a match.
For a finisher to stand out, it must have a certain degree of intensity. It can be the defining point of almost any wrestler. You don’t remember the Beverly Brothers, but you remember - and stand in fear of - their Shaker Heights Spike. It was such a deft tandem finisher that, really, should have made them bigger stars. They were never the WWF World Tag Team Champions, but teleport them to the modern independent circuit and they’d instantly be the most GIFable tag team going.
An eye-catching finisher is a key necessity to the current medium of pro wrestling.
In WWE, it’s almost non-existent. What is R-Truth’s finisher these days? Shelton Benjamin’s? Aliyah’s? You could play a contrived version of Guess Who trying to guess the finish of many, if not all of, WWE midcarders.
AEW is marginally better at this. The Judas Effect, the Buckshot Lariat, the One-Winged Angel, the Meltzer Driver, and the Lockjaw are all such memorable match-ending sequences. Even lower down the card, you know that Brian Pillman Jr. uses a springboard clothesline ala his father.
What’s missing from BPJ’s Air Pillman, though, is a level of brutality. As for these ten? They exude it…
10. Brody King - Gonzo Bomb
Paul Orndorff, Jerry Lynn, and FTR have all utilised the traditional Piledriver to some capacity.
Orndorff's was a standard variant, while Lynn opted for a Gotch-style variant ala Minoru Suzuki, and FTR, as the Brainbusters did before them, apply a spike on top, compressing opponents' necks wonderfully.
These all fair in modern comparison to Brody King, though.
When he hoists an opponent up, he traditionally places them over his shoulder, making it appear as if he's actually performing a Dominator. Instead, he drops them ever so slightly, spiking the poor adversary directly on their head in an incredibly sick visual.
There's an immense amount of trust put into anyone when executing a Piledriver as it is, but for Brody King, there must be a layer above the norm. When Paul Orndorff used the traditional variant, he lifted his opponent so that they went up by a ninety-degree angle. It's still dangerous, of course, but it remains safer, for lack of a better term. For Brody, however, he brings his opponent down at a more precarious angle, almost onto the rear of their neck, as opposed to a direct spike on the head.
Almost everything could go wrong with one single hiccup, but Brody has managed to perfect his match-ending manoeuvre.