Ranking What Was Really The Best Wrestling Finisher Every Year 1990-2020

Immortal Combat.

Best Finishers
WWE/NJPW

Honourable mentions are vast.

Bret Hart's Sharpshooter, invariably built towards with a gripping and immersive logic, wasn't spectacular enough to make the grade, painful though it was to merely look at. Besides which, he often won with pinning combinations that were sold as strategic triumphs and not acts of f*cking theft booked as flukes to justify a rematch.

Goldberg's Jackhammer was legendary - a hugely impressive display of strength punctuated with a fantastic oh-sh*t snap - but he wasn't the most entertaining bald icon of 1998.

In a decision many will feel personally insulted by, there is no room either for the super-finishers with which AJPW's Four Pillars enshrined themselves into legend. This, to be clear, is not a list of the best finishers ever - Kenta Kobashi's Burning Hammer's scarce and immaculate mythology positions it at the top end of such a list - but rather a list in celebration of the best finishers wrestlers used (and in some cases conceived) to get over as standouts of the given calendar year.

Some are so spectacular that they simply cannot be ignored. Others possess a pristine and under-appreciated narrative heft.

Some, thrillingly, have the lot...

31. 1990 - Frankensteiner

Best Finishers
WWE.com

Jaw-dropping and futuristic, Scott Steiner's Frankensteiner was a sensation in 1990.

It fused the two key components of a finish perfectly: it looked cooler than everything else he (or for that matter, anybody) did, and it looked rather difficult to kick out of, since he used those tree trunks he called thighs to spike guys directly onto their heads.

It required an insane level of agility and power. Steiner would send his opponents hurtling towards the ropes, jump up to meet them waist to head-height with an astonishing vertical leap, and, with one fluid motion that never looked cooperative, dropped them scalp-first with the takedown.

And because he was Steiner - a legitimate badass who rather enjoyed laying sh*t in so hard it became compacted - that head drop looked less like a "bump" and more like a "drill through the wooden boards".

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!