10 Wrestlers Who Could No Longer Perform Their Finisher

Jon Moxley has one of the smoothest looking double-arm DDTs in wrestling, but that wasn’t his original choice for a finish when he first showed up as a part of The Shield during his formative years in WWE.

Before making the transition to Dirty Deeds 2.0, Moxley – then known as Dean Ambrose, as if you’d forgotten – had a much nastier looking finisher, one that many were surprised WWE signed off on given how nasty it looked when executed correctly.

The first version of Dirty Deeds was a take on the Headlock Driver, in which Mox would grab an opponent’s head as if to give them a bulldog, but instead fell forwards with them in tow and spiked their heads directly into the canvas.

Talking to Fightful, Moxley explained why the change occurred, citing the way the move looked when used against the wrong opponent rather than a conscious creative choice or something pushed on him by Vince McMahon and co.

“The Headlock Driver’s awesome if you’ve got the right guy doing it to the right guy. It can be like the nastiest, coolest piledriver looking thing in the world or if the guy’s taller than you, which so many of the guys in the WWE were taller than me, it can be just really awkward and stupid looking. I think I gave it to Randy Orton one time, who is someone with a significant height advantage on me, it just was awkward. I was like, ‘That’s it, I’m switching this up.”

Mox credits Joey Mercury as the brains behind the new version of Dirty Deeds, adding his name to a long list of wrestlers Mercury has helped out creatively over the years.