9 Things We May Never See In WWE Again
4. Reverse/Sit-Out Piledrivers
While some moves have been banned as a precautionary measure, here we have a move that has some rather more empirical evidence of the dangers it possesses.
Back at SummerSlam 1997, disaster would strike during Owen Hart’s match with Stone Cold Steve Austin, when a seemingly routine piledriver went awry and Austin landed hard on his neck. After being temporarily paralysed, Austin would later have to undergo multiple surgeries throughout his career before calling time on his days in the ring in 2003.
Since then the piledriver has, understandably, been banned.
Admittedly though, we’ve seen it pulled out on a couple of occasions by the likes of Shawn Michaels and CM Punk, among others. Also, the Undertaker regularly busts out his tombstone variation, but each of these versions are slightly safer than Owen’s reverse piledriver.
The sit-out component of Owen’s version was far more dangerous than the way ‘Taker would deliver the move on his knees, while the set-up of the standard piledriver makes it easier to keep the opponents head off of the ground.
Long story short, while we may not have seen our last-ever piledriver in WWE, I feel confident saying we won’t be seeing this reverse/sit-out variation again.