Finishing Moves: On the Edge of Your Seat and Begging for More

I see a lot of articles on B/R regarding people’s favorite finishing moves of all time, or lists of the best/worst finishers ever and I began to think; what makes a finisher so damn important and what makes good finishers so damn entertaining?

What would the wrestling world be like if wrestlers didn’t have finishing moves, I couldn’t imagine Stone Cold drinking a beer, flipping the bird, kicking Vince McMahon in the gut and then climb the ropes celebrating, it just wouldn’t be right without the stunner and if I didn’t see a more convincing finish I would feel ripped off.

Every fan needs to see a conclusion, they need to know when to start cheering because their favorite is about to win, if there wasn’t some sort of signal to realize something important was happening you would have fans missing the three count wondering why the match had stopped.

Because of this finishing moves have become a necessity, a requirement for every wrestler wanting to enter the squared circle (or in some cases the Hexagonal Squared Circle…or whatever).

It tells us fans that the match is ending (it is called a finishing move for a reason). If every match ended in a roll-up or an inside cradle for a quick pin I imagine that professional wrestling would bury itself due to lack of ticket sales/ratings.

Wrestlers also need finishing moves to develop their characters. The move needs to fit with the persona of the wrestler entering the ring, if this isn’t the case then it just isn’t plausible, I don’t think that a big power-house type wrestler like Batista would have been nearly as successful with a submission move like the Sharpshooter.

If Batista was finishing each match with the Sharpshooter, would fans really think he was much of a powerhouse, I think not.

Fans will always remember the finish. They associate that finisher with the wrestler, and the persona that the finisher implies. In some cases a finishing move is one of the most important assets in a wrestler’s career.

However with these things stated, the quality of the finisher does not make or break a wrestlers career, wrestlers can be very successful without having the huge finishers that some others have.

When I start to think about all the most memorable finishers of all time I start thinking about the moves that fans were dying to see over and over, night after night.

What I came up with is certain categories that each move seems to fall into or in some cases blanket across. I believe these attributes is what make us love them and by association the wrestlers who perform them.

Out of Nowhere, The finishing moves that come out of nowhere, you don’t expect them till the last moment, usually highly devastating, they are mostly completed within less than a second, leaving you to wait for the replay to see the action all over again.

Build Up. They draw you close; they pull you to the edge of your seat. Agonizingly you wait a few seconds before seeing the final blow, dreading the end, making your heart leap.

Lengthy. Usually submission type moves, they last lengthy periods of time, allowing the camera to zoom in and focus on the victims face, seeing the pain in their eyes, your whole body becomes captivated by what is happening in front of you, your pulse increasing faster and faster almost begging for the end.

Spectacle. High Impact, Athletically astonishing, unbelievable and amazing, your are so shocked by what you just saw that the replay isn’t enough, you want, no, you need to see it again in slow motion just so your brain can comprehend what just happened.

So what would wrestling be like without finishers? I think it would be like having March Madness without finishing with the Final Four or the playoffs without the Superbowl.

Thank you for reading my thoughts regarding one of the most important components of a wrestler’s repertoire.