10 Wrestlers Who Were The Last Person To Take Iconic Moves

The finishing line for finishers.

Hogan last legdrop
PMG

Wrestling firsts are easy to document, and therefore are done so prolifically (our archive must contain several dozen articles on the topic). The first Stone Cold Stunner? The non-stop trivia machine that is internet wrestling fandom knows it was poor Jason Arhndt - latterly Joey Abs - who damn near broke his neck when Austin debuted the move. Who took The Undertaker's first Tombstone? That honour rests with Koko B. Ware, who absorbed a botched variant of the latterly iconic finisher at Survivor Series '90.

Firsts are a piece of cake, then. But lasts? They're much harder to pin down, such is the eternal nature of a wrestler's career. Wrestlers are notorious for their inability to stay away once they're best years have deserted them, and even the most august of retirement ceremonies - we're looking at you, Edge, Shawn Michaels - can latterly be undermined by the prospect of further fame and further financial reward.

So trying to pinpoint who the last men to take iconic wrestling moves is a bit tricky, but hey ho, there's not a lot you can do these days so we've tried it anyways. We're only counting televised or otherwise documented occurrences here, in the knowledge there's every chance Ric Flair slapped a hospital orderly in the figure four at some point in 2017.

10. Bret Hart's Sharpshooter - Ric Flair

Hogan last legdrop
WWE.com

Unfortunately, Bret Hart's less than excellently executed Sharpshooter on Vince McMahon at WrestleMania XXVI was not his last televised application of the once lethal, beautifully presented submission move. The Hitman broke out the squatting-on-a-toilet version of his legendary hold once more at Payback 2016, locking Ric Flair in it as part of his niece Natalya's feud with similar second-generation star Charlotte.

Naturally, and tiresomely, this spot followed yet another Montreal callback, after the ref had called for the bell as Charlotte held Natalya in her own version of Bret's iconic finisher. But hey, it was only 19 years after the fact. If The Queen had really wanted to replicate the piece of 1997 wrestling historia, she'd have copied Shawn Michaels' botched version, which looked even worse than the one Hart slapped on Flair two decades later.

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Editorial Team
Editorial Team

Benjamin was born in 1987, and is still not dead. He variously enjoys classical music, old-school adventure games (they're not dead), and walks on the beach (albeit short - asthma, you know). He's currently trying to compile a comprehensive history of video game music, yet denies accusations that he purposefully targets niche audiences. He's often wrong about these things.