You're watching an early match of a wrestler who'd eventually become a huge deal, and most of the pieces are there. The physical charisma is there, and you can see flashes of what he'd eventually become. You start to really get into the match, but you're left surprised and deflated when the match ends on some random move, not the legendary finisher that would become forever associated with him. For better or for worse, a wrestlers finishing move is an important part of his persona. It may stretch credulity to imagine that most guys can only reliably pin an opponent after landing an officially-approved, trademark Signature Move, or that 20 years worth of opponents couldn't figure out a way to reliably counter a Sweet Chin Music, but it's integral. It's listed right beneath height, weight, and hometown on the short list of vital stats of a given competitor. Sometimes, though, it takes a while to find something that works. Randy Orton wasn't born throwing RKOs OUTTA NOWHERE, and it took Shawn Michaels nearly a decade to start tuning up the band. This list explores the early years of some of historys most successful wrestlers, and their first draft finishers that they somehow expected to win them championships.
30. The Miz
Okay, so maybe it's a stretch to call The Miz great, but the guy did have a respectable run as WWE Champion and a WrestleMania victory over John Cena. It's a combination that puts him in an extremely exclusive fraternity; only Miz, The Rock, and Randy Orton can make the claim. The weapon that brought the Miz to these heights? A full-nelson facebuster known, somewhat hyperbolically as the Skull-Crushing Finale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl1mMVbF2PQ Despite the name, it's hardly a spectacular move, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor. In the long-long-ago, when Miz was fresh off the reality show circuit and wrestling in late-90s JNCO shorts, he finished what few opponents he could with the Mizard of Oz, an atrociously-named, bowling shoe-ugly neckbreaker/DDT thing. By 2007 he'd upgraded to the Reality Check, another goofy neckbreaker, and he'd adopt the SKF just in time for his main event ascendancy.
