10 Unlikely Origins Of Wrestling Finishers
5. The Origin Behind (And Evolution Of) Jon Moxley's Death Rider
Dean Ambrose's original Dirty Deeds finish was awesome.
A headlock driver, it looked like it f*ckin' sucked to take. He wrenched his arm around some dude's head and drove it to the canvas below. Blood circulation cut short, motion sickness, and trauma to the head and neck: get the f*ck in. That's what this sh*t is all about.
Alas, it only worked on performers of comparable height. When Ambrose tried it on Randy Orton, he realised that it looked awkward in certain situations. Orton was too tall. A primary finisher has to work in every situation because the threat of the execution informs the drama of the all-important finishing sequence. And so Ambrose took on an underhook DDT and did very well to get a very worn move over as main event-level finish.
As Jon Moxley, he was intelligent and ghoulish enough to grasp that he could and had to take it to the next level in New Japan and AEW. There's a deeper expectation of gnarly violence in those promotions, and he was happy to satiate it. The new, elevated underhook got over big, after he was, again, clever enough to get Juice Robinson over by allowing him to kick out of the WWE version.
The new name - Death Rider - has an unlikely origin story of its own. The stand-in hired for a vignette to halfway resemble Mox from the back was dressed in a jacket purchased from a goodwill store. 'Death Rider' happened to be emblazoned on it, and thus, the most perfect nickname for an act ever was born out of serendipity.