The Finishing Touch

I've been around the e-fed circuits for almost a decade, and when you see as many feds and as many e-wrestlers as I do, you get exposed to a lot of different philosophies on wrestling movesets and finishing moves. Many of them are ports of famous wrestling finishers, mostly uranage/Rock Bottom clones, Stunner/Ace Crusher/Diamond Cutter variants, simple powerbombs, superkicks and over the shoulder piledrivers. Sometimes you get a run on finishers that are hot at the time, like the *ugh* Canadian Destroyer.

Although this is a point I've made before, I'll say it again: it's perfectly natural and acceptable to borrow moves from our favorite wrestlers. I mean, we wouldn't be in this game if it weren't for those guys, right? Since wrestlers usually outlast feds in our game, it's acceptable, if a little annoying, to see multiple guys with the same finisher. Usually, if you have a finisher, you've had it before you entered a certain fed where another tenured guy there has it. However, I like it best when someone either creates a move or picks one that's so rare or out there that it makes you mark out just reading the profile. Other moves just fit their characters so well that it doesn't matter how many other people do them.

The following is a list of my favorite e-fed finishers of all-time, not including my own. These are in no particular order.

Spoilerbomb The Spoiler - This was the move that birthed MBE all those years ago and by proxy, pulled me into e-fedding (in that MBE inspired A1E and well, yeah). Brutal powerbomb finisher that really fits the man in red and black.

HIDADRIVER~! (oh the humanity) Hida Yakamo - To me, this was probably the most mythical of finishers just because it had its own catchphrase. It's a running Splash Mountain (ie, sitout Razor's Edge). It seems like the kind of move that you'd see pulled out at the Tokyo Dome in minute 45 of a GHC Championship match.

The Judas Cradle Beast - I love a good submission hold, and this was really the first one that I latched onto. It's a weird, funky hold, sort of a cross between a backwards-applied figure four and an Indian deathlock.

Point of Impact Euclid - I really never got into the brainbuster as a match finisher until recently, like two or three years ago, but I always dug this variation on it. It's a brainbuster, but on the way down, E would drop his elbow across the victim's throat. Devastating all around.

Hell on Earth Liquid Snake - Another common move with a slight variation. This was a Pedigree, only at the end, Snake would turn his body slightly, jamming his knee on the back of the victim's head. I have no idea how this move could be performed safely, but it would look brutal as hell, something that the late Misawa would probably use if it were used in real life.

North of Sanity Craig Miles - I've always been a mark for Randy Savage's top rope elbow drop. People discount the elbow drop, but really, if you got an elbow, even from a stationary opponent dropping down on you on the canvas, your chest would be CAVED. The contrived part about the People's Elbow was the five minutes of set-up, not the payoff. Okay, end tangent. I think if anyone could deliver this move with as much pomp and urgency that Savage did, I'd picture it would be Miles, who in character (and some might say out of character) is legit insane.

Memphis Death Certificate Jeff Garvin - There was a time in the 90s when the piledriver became garden variety in real wrestling. Then Steve Austin got paralyzed and you never saw it again except from Jerry Lawler. Maybe that was the best thing that could have happened to its mystique stateside, because really, a piledriver should be death. It should be treated like it is in Mexico... borderline illegal. That being said, this move is on here more because of the name than because of my admiration for the move. It really gets across the seriousness of the move.

Uraken~! the School Girl - tSC was always known as "the workrate fed" of all the angle feds back in the day. Now, if you're, say, ROH and you're labeled that, it's a good thing. If you're an e-fed and you're labeled it, well... let's just say tSC in its day had match writeups that made Charles Dickens look terse. Still, the profile pages were a sight to behold, a veritable workrate mark's dream. Of these, the oddest was the School Girl, a dinky little Asian chick on a roster of big male wrestlers. However, what made her believable was her finisher, the Uraken. I'm a mark for this move in real life. It will fuck your day up something else. Looking back, this was the only finisher that really could have been credible on tSG. She couldn't believably slam, suplex or power even the lightest men, but her fleet-footedness would have put a wallop behind that spinning backfist.

NyQuil Driver D! - This was the move I used as D!'s de facto finisher throughout the initial Tournament of Champions. It really is a sick move if you think about it, and all it is is a tweak on an existing move. It's basically Edge's Edge-o-Matic only done out of a sleeper hold. Brutal, brutal stuff.

C-4 Karina Wolfenden - Imagine a vertebreaker. Okay, now imagine it being done out of a springboard backflip. This is the epitome of a "death move".

Humility Bomb Dan Ryan - I almost didn't put this on here just because I already led off with the Spoilerbomb, but in all actuality, they're different moves and are attached to different mythos. While the Spoilerbomb is correlated to the Last Ride, this bomb, to my understanding, is more like a sheer drop powerbomb on the head and neck. This move runs neck and neck with the following one as the most over finisher in the FW circuit's history.

Slackknife Troy Windham - A sharp contrast to the Humility Bomb in that it's a lightning quick strike that capitalizes on stunning an opponent for a quick win rather than a move bent on destruction of a body part after a long war of attrition, just in the same vein as Windham is a cocky character whose speciality is getting out one liners and crowing heartily about his accomplishments while Ryan will break you down cerebrally. Wow, that was an epic run-on sentence for two epic moves :p Anyway, the Slackknife is basically an inverted stunner, like a Rude Awakening, but only done a lot quicker and in the stunner style.

Mjollnir Blow Olvir Arsvinnar - I've always pictured Olvir as the sort of wrestler the smarks would loathe if he were real. Lumbering, slow but powerful and possibly stiff. He'd the Nordic Goldberg of FW, insanely over due to his animal charisma. He may not work well, but his signature moves look good because that's all he'd really concentrate on perfecting. The Mjollnir Blow is a Polish Hammer to the chest with a roar for effect done after. While it's not listed as one of his finishers, no one can deny that a huge Viking clubbing both his hands balled together in a MEGA FIST on your chest at terminal velocity would look real enough to make everyone believe that chest is now caved and the match could be finished. I'd love to see Strawsma make this Olvir's finisher, especially when done out of the Irish Whip.

Smile For Me Tony Gamble - Talk about a move that fits the character. Gamble's face is disfigured on one side to make it look like he's smiling all the time. You could say he's got half-a-Joker going on. This move is a play on that, a Texas Cloverleaf with a fishhook applied to one side of the face. It fits so well with the character's mafioso paranoia.

Bulimia Nervosa Bomb Dos Equis - Flying double stomp to the stomach... BRILLIANT! Why more people, both in real life and e-feds, don't try to use this as a finisher is beyond me, but I guess I'm glad it's so underused. It makes this application more special.