Credit: WWE.comOver time, pro wrestling has seen its combatants crash onto the mat more often, taking more dangerous paths to make that impact as the industry evolved.
Early on, power moves were rare. A man taken off his feet was a highlight of a bout, a reason to slide forward in one's chair. Pro wrestling in its infancy centered around men grabbing for a wrist or reaching for an ankle.
The mat game grew into more of a spectacle than a contest of wills, requiring takedowns to be anything but the simple slams they were at first.
In the early 20th century, the ring was home to something much more akin to Greco-Roman wrestling than what we see today. To bring a foe to his back, a grappler used a headlock takedown or took the opponent's leg from off the mat and pushed him backward.
Travel back to 1913. Watch Gustav Fristensky clash with Josef Smejkal in front of a large crowd:
One will not see a single piledriver or superplex. The action centers on the competitors' battling for control either while standing or doing the same while on the mat. The trip downward isn't as central to the sport as it is now.
The bodyslam is one of the key ways wrestlers began to move pro wrestling away from its Greco-Roman roots, implementing a weapon that would be illegal in an amateur setting.
To scoop a man up and send him crashing onto his back is now commonplace. The bodyslam is not a move that will earn one an "ooh" today. It's a setup for something bigger.
In the past, though, it was a thrilling item in one's arsenal.
Wilbur Snyder and Angelo Poffo (Randy Savage's father) clashed often in the '50s. They built toward the climax of their match in Chicago by trading bodyslams.
That move is among the highlights of the action, with the two foes taking big swings looking to end the bout.
The bodyslam became more customary as time went on. Its significance only rose when the man receiving the move was a Goliath.
Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III centered on whether the hero could lift up the behemoth and slam him down. He did, of course.
A move that would have shocked the fans watching Gustav Fristensky vs. Josef Smejkal was eventually not exciting enough. Variations of it began to arrive.
Gorilla Monsoon would lift his opponents high above his head as if they were barbells and he a weightlifter. After showing off his strength, he'd dump them on the mat.
What became known as the gorilla (or military) press slam was one of The Ultimate Warrior's favorite moves.
Davey Boy Smith popularized a version of the bodyslam that added momentum to the equation. The British Bulldog would prop a man onto his shoulder and run forward before slamming him down.
Dr. Death Steve Williams' version of the running powerslam involved knocking the opponent into the turnbuckle. Paying homage to his home state and alma mater, he dubbed it the "Oklahoma Stampede."
As wrestling fans got accustomed to seeing men flung about the ring, it took new moves to excite them. That led to wrestlers tweaking and experimenting with the simple slam.
The recipient's body shifted position as new versions were born.
Arn Anderson made the spinebuster famous in the '80s. The move begins with the attacker facing the opponent then lifting him up with his arms around his waist before slamming him to the canvas.
Wrestlers from Ryback to Triple H still use it today, but no one has captured the crispness that Anderson's version achieved.
Grapplers also slammed their foes down with the sidewalk slam. The attacker only lifted the opponent to waist level, holding him to his side before plunging him down.
Kevin Nash became synonymous with the move. He began his career in the early '90s and had many a foe experience the sidewalk slam firsthand. It has since become standard fare, something that wrestlers like Kane dish out in between more attention-grabbing power moves.
Other simpler yet more devastating slams emerged.
The Rock implemented a sideslam where the attacker falls forward, dubbing it "Rock Bottom."
In 2013, Damien Sandow was in search of a trademark move of his own. "You're Welcome" began with a full nelson and ended with what looked a lot like a Rock Bottom. It gets increasingly difficult to come up with new moves as the wrestling toolbox swells every year.
The Rock's famous move isn't even all that unique. It's clearly the cousin of the sidewalk slam and the chokeslam.
Big men began to grab their opponents by the throat and send them flying with a chokeslam. Giants like Kane, Undertaker and Big Show all utilized this method of dishing out pain, beginning in the '90s.
It is still perceived as enough of a high-impact move to be a finisher, not just a precursor.
That hasn't stopped wrestlers from adding to it. The evolution of the slam has crossed over into that of other moves. In come cases, the powerbomb and the suplex have merged into it.
Several contemporary grapplers have taken to beginning what looks to be a chokeslam and incorporating a powerbomb-like impact. Not surprisingly, this is known as the "chokebomb."
Jaguar Yokota married the suplex to the powerslam. In a move now known as "the jackhammer" and more associated with Goldberg, Yokota began with a vertical suplex and quickly flipped it into a powerslam. It was only a matter of time before these kinds of power moves overlapped. Fans craved novelty; wrestlers sought to stand out.
Suplexes didn't begin as involved and showy as Yokota's. They came out of wrestling's roots, beginning as simple throws.
The Suplex
The basic suplex is an actual wrestling move, as from the kind of wrestling one sees at the Olympics or with the ancient Greeks. In those worlds, you will not, however, see the kind of flair-filled takes on what is supposed to be pronounced "soo-play."
Pro wrestling adopted and morphed the act of tossing a foe around.
Beginning in the late '50s, Karl Gotch became known for a suplex where he wrapped his arms tight around his opponent's waist, hurled him backward and held his own body tight in a bridge to pin him.
Although not his creation, the German suplex became associated with Gotch, earning it its name. The "German" part comes from Gotch's background. He was born in Belgium but grew up in Germany.
The name now serves as a tribute to him.
Gotch would end up making his name in Japan, though. It was there he was known as the "God of Pro Wrestling," and his amateur wrestling background won him a throng of fans.
Among those must have been the Japanese grapplers that came after him. That country's performers produced a number of varieties of the suplex, playing off Gotch's original straightforward riff.
Hiroshi Hase's foundation was in Greco-Roman wrestling, and he represented Japan in the 1984 Olympics. Beginning in the late '80s, he moved to the pro version of the game and introduced a new weapon—the Northern Lights suplex.
Much like the move that Gotch made famous, it ended in a bridging pin. The position was different, as the attacker faces his opponent before tucking his head under the foe's arm.
Masa Saito's weapon of choice was less graceful. What would eventually be called the Saito Suplex was a more violent throw backwards where the recipient tumbled over upon landing on the mat.
A desire to create new suplexes must have been infectious, spreading across the island nation. The Japanese rings became home to more dangerous, more creative variations of the suplex.
Tatsumi Fujinami nailed foes with the Dragon Suplex, a full nelson transitioned into either a bridge or simply a head-first collision into the mat.
The move became commonplace in Japan, and thanks to grapplers who traveled there like Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho, it garnered popularity in the United States as well.
Jun Akiyama, like Fujinami, must have desired a new way to send an opponent flying across the canvas. A star for New Japan Pro Wrestling throughout the '90s, he infused the Exploder Suplex into his long list of great matches.
The basic version involved him grabbing his foe by the head with one arm and using the other to flip him backward.
Akiyama later crafted Exploder '98 which added a wrist-clutch element, giving the man about to go for a violent ride one less way to escape.
The standard exploder became a mainstay in wrestling. Shelton Benjamin tweaked it, adding a slam to the end and dubbing it the T-Bone Suplex.
Years before Bray Wyatt began using his version of a uranage, wrestlers in Japan were issuing a nastier version. Borrowed from the world of judo, wrestlers like Sakie Hasegawa and Mr. Northern Lights himself, Hase lifted, twisted and planted foes with the move.
Not to be outdone, Yoshihiro Yamazaki, the man who played Tiger Mask IV began folding his foe's arm back with a chicken wing hold before suplexing him. Of course, this wasn't hard-hitting enough for some.
Wrestlers like Haruko Matsuo raised the stakes by raising the starting point of the move. The avalanche version of Yamazaki's Millenium Suplex is a human car crash.
The legendary Manami Toyota outdid her male peers, coming up with the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex. She began the move by sitting her opponent on her shoulders, then crossing and holding onto her arms before dropping her backward.
Japan wasn't the only suplex laboratory, but often the newest moves found their way there, only to become more dangerous.
Billy Robinson, a British wrestler with a strong amateur background, had a unique way of throwing and/or finishing his foes. With his opponent bent forward, he hooked both of his arms before lifting him.
The double underhook suplex, as it is known, was one of the many tools that he brought along with him to Japan when he began to compete there in the '70s.
It was a hit. Jumbo Tsuruta was among the many to adopt it into move sets. Today it's common, as Robinson's favorite attack is a prevalent sight.
The superplex became popular outside of Japan, too. Bob Orton Jr. (known to some fans today only as Randy Orton's dad) popularized the move by taking a basic vertical suplex and moving it to the turnbuckles for added height.
Throughout the '70s and '80s, when Orton wrestled in Florida and various territories, a suplex from as high as the top turnbuckle was a shocking move.
That shock wore off eventually. Wrestlers began to hit the move from higher points and added more dangerous apparatus as well. Japan's hardcore-centric promotions were home to some of the nastier renditions of Orton's baby.
The Tiger Suplex was born first in Mexico. Alfonso Dantes wrestled in the '60s and '70s, becoming light heavyweight champ several times over in his native country.
Stocky and powerful, much of the punishment Dantes dished out was based around submissions. In addition to grinding his opponents into the mat, he came up with a new suplex. As Chris Schramm writes for Slam! Sports, "He is credited for inventing the Toque Tapatio."
The original Tiger Mask borrowed the move and popularized it, in Japan and elsewhere. That's how the "Tiger" part of the name came to be, washing away the original moniker.
Dantes' invention eventually fell into Mitsuharu Misawa's hands. He moved an arm to the foes neck, creating the Tiger Suplex '85. That wasn't enough for the sadist suplexer.
This venture into increasingly dangerous territory, incorporating more moves that had a wrestler land on his head and neck, was a theme in Japan throughout the '90s and '00s. And that was not limited to the suplex.
Other moves served up a cornucopia of concussions as well.
From the Shoulders and on the Head
Where the bodyslam and the suplex are generally designed to have a wrestler crash onto his back, several power moves instead had one's head meet the canvas.
While competing for Mid-South Wrestling, Jake Roberts discovered one of these. He stumbled upon it, literally.
Roberts told WWE that he had "The Grappler" Len Denton in a front facelock, and his opponent stepped on his foot, changing wrestling history forever. Roberts said, "I fell backwards, and he fell on the inside of his face. I got up and realized I had something."
The move became Roberts' signature, a quick, dangerous attack that fit perfectly with his snake-inspired persona.
Wrestlers still borrow it today, adding their own styles to it.
Borrowing from both Billy Robinson and Roberts, men like Mick Foley bent their foes' arms behind them before nailing them with a double underhook DDT. Further twisting of the arms was required for the Devil Lock DDT, a variation that added two hammerlocks before impact.
Rob Van Dam, among others, catapulted himself into the ring with the ring ropes before hitting a slingshot DDT. Other high-flyers like Rey Mysterio used the momentum of their mid-match flights to add more impact with a tornado DDT.
Wrestling's driver has had even more incarnations than the DDT. Apparently, there are a multitude of painful options when you have someone hung up on your shoulders.
That was one of Gorilla Monsoon's favorite positions to have an opponent as he dizzied him with the airplane spin. It's a move that looks cartoonish today, a man spinning another around and around in the ring until he's wobbly.
Muhammad Ali experienced it firsthand when he and Monsoon had a staged altercation in 1976.
The Samoan Drop didn't have as much centrifugal force as that move but made up for it in violence. Peter Maivia helped popularize it throughout a career that began in the early '60s, sending his foes crashing from a fireman's carry position.
It's a move that many a Samoan wrestler adopted. Maivia's grandson The Rock, Roman Reigns, The Usos and Umaga all worked it into their repertoires.
The airplane spin and the Samoan drop served as the templates for much more intense, high-impact moves.
Among those is the Death Valley Bomb or Death Valley Driver. The ride for the recipient begins on the opponent's shoulders and follows with a flip and a downward crash. Perry Saturn made the move famous among American audiences in the '90s with ECW and WCW.
As if that move wasn't dangerous enough, Kenta Kobashi inverted it, shifting the final impact from the shoulder area to the head itself. Thankfully, he rarely used this Burning Hammer.
Saturn's signature move also spawned a whole host of variants adding anything from a pull of the hair to a hook of the leg.
A pair of today's stars both use moves that feel like kinsmen to the Death Valley Driver. Brock Lesnar's F-5 begins in similar fashion, but rather than drive his opponent downward, he sends him spinning in the air, turning him into a human helicopter for a brief moment.
John Cena began using the Attitude Adjustment (initially dubbed "F-U" as a knock on Lesnar). It is the tamer of the two. He tosses his foe off his shoulders, allowing him to fall on his back as opposed to the crown of his skull, as Kobashi did.
As violent as Lesnar's and Cena's weapons are, they don't need to be used as rarely as a Burning Hammer. They are eye-catching enough by risking broken necks.
In recent years, there has been a move away from the more extreme, more concern-creating power moves at WWE. Rather than continue the game of one-upmanship that Kobashi and others played, WWE pulled back.
That was the evolutionary arc of the piledriver as well.
Piledrivers and Powerbombs
St. Louis fans were among the first to watch the piledriver make its way into wrestling. In the '30s and '40s, the grappling game was still centered on headlocks and armbars. Wild Bill Longson changed that.
The three-time NWA world champ, who achieved the peak of his fame in The Gateway to the West, began holding his opponent upside down against his body and dropping him on their heads.
Greg Oliver writes in Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heels, "After Longson softened up his opponent, he invariably broke out the piledriver, a move he popularized."
The attacker's legs squeezed together to protect the man or woman taking the move, but it still looked devastating. That led to a horde of wrestlers making it their finisher over the years. Terry Funk, Paul Orndorff and Tully Blanchard were among those who adopted it.
In the '70s, fans watched as Andre the Giant inverted the piledriver. With his prey in his grip, belly against belly, he fell to his knees.
After him, Don Muraco took to using this reverse version of Longson's favorite means of punishment. Dynamite Kid and a number of Japanese stars infused it into their arsenals as well. Most famously, Undertaker made it his own, dubbing it the Tombstone piledriver.
Variations came flooding in, especially on the independent circuit.
Delirious, most known for his stints with Ring of Honor and Chikara, upped the danger level. His Chemical Imbalance II had him tuck his victim's arms between his legs before dropping him on his head and neck. Petey Williams introduced the world to the Canadian Destroyer, a piledriver that also included a front flip.
Super Dragon melded Gory Guerrero's Gory Special with the piledriver, planting his opponents with more momentum and force than Longson ever did. He called it the Barry White Driver.
While other companies welcomed this kind of creativity, this forging of new piledriver derivatives, WWE shied away from the move.
The company banned the piledriver other than in select situations, with Kane and Undertaker's Tombstone getting grandfathered in.
Officials had seen enough injuries arise from a miscue with the move. Steve Austin broke Masahiro Chono's neck with a reverse piledriver in 1992. Five years later, Austin would be on the other end of that exchange. Owen Hart accidentally broke Austin's neck with the same move.
WWE would also avoid welcoming the dangerous offshoots that came from the powerbomb.
A man who battled Longson for the NWA world title and is considered by some to be the best wrestler in the sport's history birthed that high-impact move. As noted on WWE.com, Lou Thesz is the father of the powerbomb.
Thesz would clinch his arms around his opponent's waist and flip him over before sending him back-first to the canvas. The move caught on in a huge way.
It was the favorite pain-inducer of men like Sid Vicious, Vader and Kevin Nash. It is now a common part of matches, with wrestlers making their own adjustments to how it is delivered.
As hard on the body as that was for the folks on the receiving end, the powerbomb got more dangerous over time. Again, the Japanese took hold of this weapon and sharpened it.
In the early '90s, Mitsuharu Misawa whipped out the Emerald Flowsion, a move that began much like a bodyslam before Misawa tucked his opponents' head and seemingly attempted to drive him into the mat like a stake.
Misawa also executed the Tiger Driver '91, a violent marriage of powerbomb and piledriver. Toshiaki Kawada had a similar idea. He cooked up the Kawada Driver, a dangerous move that removed the ability to protect his opponent. There was no landing on the flat of one's back; this was a car crash-like collision of head and mat.
Kenta Kobashi rarely whipped out the Orange Crush. He had his reasons. This blend of suplex, powerbomb and piledriver looked more like a crime than a wrestling move.
Jun Akiyama, a man who battled both Misawa and Kobashi on many occasions, had his own invention. His, though, was something far more sustainable. The Blue Thunder Driver is essentially a spinning powerbomb.
It's eye-catching and dramatic without having to drop a guy on his head. Sami Zayn has been using it since he was known as El Generico.
The move didn't go away from his arsenal when he signed with NXT. Had he adopted the Kawada Driver, he would have had to find a new favorite power move.
As the evolution of the suplex, the slam and the moves that men like Thesz and Roberts brought to life continues, one wonders if things will circle back to the past. It's hard to imagine wrestlers being able to add danger beyond what men like Kobashi have created.
There is only so far one can go down that road before it's simply not safe, regardless of how crisp the execution.
There's nothing wrong with leaning on the moves that wrestling's pioneers innovated.
Some wrestlers clearly prefer the moves of the past. Brock Lesnar tipped his hat to Karl Gotch a total of 16 times in his win over John Cena at SummerSlam last year, hitting German suplex after German suplex.
This is the third part of a three-part series. Read part one, "Tracing the Evolution of Pro Wrestling's High-Flying Moves," here and part two, "Tracing the Evolution of Pro Wrestling's Submission Holds" here.
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