WWE: 10 Most Inventive Big Match Match Finishes Ever

7. Daniel Bryan vs. Santino - Maybe, Just Mayyyyybeee!

Event: Eminination Chamber 2012 The Finish: After the four other competitors were eliminated, heel Daniel Bryan is left with perpetual underdog and comedy relief character Santino. Bryan smiles like a jock on the football team being challenged to a first fight by an 11 year old girl. Everything about his body language reads "Seriously, You?!", as Santino takes a fighting stance and the crowd chants his name - ironically at first, but eventually with true enthusiasm. Bryan offers him a patronizing handshake, and instead Santino 'raises the roof' in Bryan's face. Bryan goes to throw a punch, Santino counters, and we're off to the races in one of the most creative endings to a match in recent memory. After getting the upper hand early, Bryan finds he has his hands quite full with the suddenly popular Italian Stallion. Santino won't quit, to the point where even after multiple kicks to the chest, he walks on his knees in the direction of Bryan attempting to mount something resembling offense. Then he kicks out of a pinfall, and for the next several minutes the crowd hangs on every single move like they're watching a Shawn Michaels vs. The Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin main event. Between his kick outs, counters, dodging a flying headbutt, and hitting his famed Cobra move, on the subsequent cover attempt it seemed for a brief moment, Santino could possibly win it all. But he didn't. Following a last-second kickout, Bryan locked Santino in the Yes Lock and that was all she wrote.

So what makes this largely forgotten match one of the most inventive finishes, ever? Because it took balls. It would have been easy for Bryan to end up Mano-a-mano with any of the other more popular, more traditionally 'respected' superstars in the Chamber, but WWE Creative took a chance on delivering something a little different, and ended up with a finishing sequence that left the crowd on the edge of their seat, truly believing the impossible could actually happen. It was sublime. The Impact: Depending on how you look at things, the impact of this series of events was small. Bryan lost the title to Sheamus at the following Wrestlemania in a match so short it will take you longer to read this sentence than it would to watch the match. Meanwhile Santino is still a low-on-the-totem-pole comedy midcarder, power-walking down ramps, saying silly things, and generally delighting the audiences in a variety of ways that rarely involve him winning important matches. You could also argue that Bryan's cockiness in this match resulted in him getting what was coming to him at Wrestlemania, where he spent more time kissing AJ Lee (though you couldn't blame him) then paying attention to his opponent. Regardless, this match and its finish is a wonderful example of the kind of in-the-moment stuff the WWE does every so often that wows a crowd and can leave an audience breathless and completely in the dark about what could possibly happen next - and for long-time wrestling fans, that's the most you can hope for.