6 Wrestling Finishers That Have Never Been Kicked Out Of
The Big Ending (...is not on this list)
The fact that All Elite Wrestling is still relatively boxfresh in 2019 helps a list like this, but it speaks to just how rare the protected finisher is in general nowadays that most of the roster can't contribute their killer blows to the collection.
An online trawl on this very subject will produce Baron Corbin's name time and time again thanks to the success he's found with the End Of Days, but herein lies the problem with the finisher in modern wrestling - it's more about the hot finishing sequence than the hot finish. In Corbin's case, he's not really capable of either. The Lone Wolf may well have kept the backwards-falling face-slam free of fatalistic over-exposure via kickouts, but his matches are as crushingly ubiquitous as they are dull so that doesn't really matter anyway.
Conversely, Kenny Omega's One Winged Angel was preserved magnificently by New Japan Pro Wrestling, but even it boasts one thanks to Kota Ibushi's survival of it back in their DDT days. Even when things are protected in the present, it doesn't mean they've got a perfect past.
We always say this at WhatCulture.com, but please, really do leave your suggestions in the comments below of any others that could or should be here. The wrestlers and writers that have worked so hard to protect them deserve plaudits for finding such rarified air.
6. The Judas Effect
Now a title-winning move rather than just a preposterous character decision gone rogue, Chris Jericho's sensational deployment of his deadly spinning back elbow against Hangman Page during AEW's All Out main event positioned it as genuinely lethal whilst doing the same for his standing as the company's inaugural Champion.
Against Kenny Omega at Double Or Nothing, its potency was unknown - Jericho's all-over-the-map promo style in the last two years had worked against his attempts to elevate it before the contest. Was he being sarcastic, sardonic or actually serious about the ludicrous idea of such a move doing damage? Unknown, until he pulled the trigger.
Clumsily striking the 'Best Bout Machine' with what could have been the worst new finisher of the year, his follow-up against Page cemented it as the move to look out for amidst The Young Bucks half-killing themselves flying through tables and other wrestlers half his age doing twice the theoretical damage.
There's much to love about Jericho's latter years, but this latest gambit is one of his most admirable. Nobody should be kicking out of this for years.