The Way I C It 12.17.07 - RAW-niversary Review

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 12.17.2007

My opinions on the big show (not Paul Wight), plus the latest installment of Smooth Moves!

Greetings once again humanity! As I write this, the Canadiens are busy dismantling a decent streak by the Maple Leafs (BOOOO) and making me very happy. This is good, because it's been a stressful week. Even if my boys the Raptors are starting to look good again.

Bayani likes to think he's funny. He's wrong, of course. And as for my "boyfriend's favourite position"...you should know, Bayani – he's your husband now. But hey, this is the 21st centruy, we don't judge. It's a perfectly acceptable alternate lifestyle. But don't be surprised when nobody wants to shower with you after the next 411mania staff pickup basketball game...

As we get ever closer to the money racket that is Christmas (Hanukkah being early this year, it's over already I believe), wrestling on TV gets crap as they stop trying. Nobody's watching anyway. With that in mind, I C very little worth remarking on this week. With one glaring exception...

The Way I C The E - 15th RAW-niversary Special

We're not going to talk about correct dates. This, for me, was one 3-hour markout session, from Trips' smark jokes, to Sunny (I'd hit that), to BASTION BOOGER~! and Abe Knuckleball Schwartz~!, to Hogan's music hitting, to Lita and Trish hugging...I laughed way too much. Carlito busted out 2 or 3 spots that made me gasp. Simul-spinebusters were great.

The best part of the night, for me, was the battle royale. Steve mother-loving Blackman looking awesome! Bart Gunn! Flash Funk! SKINNER~! The GOON~! Gangrel with RING OF FIRE entrance! I was a touch disappointed that they didn't have Godfather pull double duty and come out as Papa Shango.

I mentioned it on the forums, but it bears repeating: Blackman needs to be brought back. Just for fun, bring back Bart Gunn and reform the New Midnight Express, make them into stiff-asses. Team Cody with Reid Flair and have them feud. Flash Funk can still go, but not with that gimmick. And, of course, Ted DiBiase is (pardon the pun) MONEY. He needs to manage someone, stat. Like Bobby Lashley (thanks boss!), of Charlie Haas.

Sure, there was stuff I missed. Like Bret, Rock, Shamrock, X-Pac...a Hardcore title match maybe, or Bobby Heenan on commentary, more Fink...but it did what it wanted to do: showcased some of what's around now to people who tuned in to see what was around then. They got the ratings pop, and I would be surprised if they didn't keep at least some of those viewers.

The Way U C Me – Now with Comments!

First, the sole email, from regular Chris Jacobs:

There is one more person that I never thought of that did the piledriver. Mark Jindrak. I saw it on a blooper video online, it was back when him and Luther Reigns were feuding. I figured maybe he did it on the indies well, and they needed something better than a PUNCH for his finisher. If you find the link of a video that has this, and if I find it before then I will send it, but he pildrives Luther, and leans backwards too much, Luther's ass falls on Jindrak's head and knocks him completley out cold. So he drops a guy on there head, in reality drops the guy onto his own face, but basically does a piledriver and knocks himself out. I have never seen that moved botched to hurt ther person giving it. Worth a look, and another reason why it's dangerous, and in a way I never thought.

Jindrak vs Reigns....there's a big money feud. Whatever happened to Reigns anyway? I don't remember the spot in question, but I do remember liking Jindrak until they made his finisher a punch. I mean seriously. Since talking about returns is all the rage these days, they should bring back Jindrak and O'Haire and make a stable with Palumbo. O'Haire can work the stick better than the other two, so he's your mouthpiece. Back to the spot though....can you imagine having to take a night off, and giving "knocked out by Luther's ass" as the reason? Unless you're Bayani, of course.

From the brand-spanking new Comments section, we have Adam quoting a popular urban legend:


i heard lou thez invented the pile driver when he botched a gutwrench suplex.


That is the common belief, yes. However, I don't like to post unsubstantiated stuff when discussing moves, especially not something like daring to suggest Lou Thesz ever botched anything. A guest referred me to an outside site for a clip of Jake Crist's Suicide Attempt. I uploaded it to YouTube, thusly:



Ouch. I've seen him hit it better, but this is clearly one of the top 10 nastiest finishers around. If we might regress to Piledriver Week for a second, I also stumbled across this on YouTube:



Let's see Maple Leaf Weiner Muscle pull THAT one out. Next comment came from Kragar:

Excellent column. I would like to suggest doing a column on double-team moves. There are so many out there that I've heard of by name but never seen. Could you help a brother out?

Excellent suggestion. Next time though, can you phrase it a bit different? Saying "double-team" around Bayani makes him all sweaty and gross. I'll file this away under "Future Ideas".

Great column, as always. I haven't been writing in with my feedback, but let it be known that I am still a full supporter of your work, sir. You have to love move analysis.

Posted By: Matt Eli (Guest) on December 10, 2007 at 03:53 AM

Thanks much, and it is appreciated. While I remember, since the site is about to switch into full-on "Best of 2007" mode shortly, would anyone like to see a "Best Bumps of 2007" column? Since I have one due on the 31st, I will need to know shortly, so post/email your favourites if it's something you'd be interested in!

Great Column BUT what about the Tombstone? the only Piledriver still used in the E and one of the safest moves on the planet when done by Taker or Kane?

Posted By: Shane (Guest) on December 10, 2007 at 08:49 AM

My first Smooth Moves volume dealt with the Tombstone and variations, because there were enough to make it worthwhile. It is fairly safe, but even Kane doesn't use it that much now, probably because he's been booked against monsters virtually non-stop. If, as I think, he turns on CM Punk tonight, expect to see it. Then Punk gets to go over Kane clean before dropping the belt to Shelton.

No vertabreaker? I haven't seen it used in years and it still makes me cringe.

Posted By: BJC (Guest) on December 10, 2007 at 11:22 AM

The vertebreaker is coming, next week in fact, in what I like to term External Occipital Protuberance week. Anyone who doesn't get that reference needs to watch some old WWF events with Gorilla on commentary.

The Suicide looks like a double underhook arm drag from the top rope. I like Peteys cause of the speed in which he does it.

Posted By: Adam (Guest) on December 11, 2007 at 04:29 PM

Double underhook armdrag? The day I see an arm drag drop a borther on his head, I will mark. The Suicide Attempt is lovely. End of discussion. Petey can make a Destroyer look good, yes. But there aren't a lot of people in TNA who can or will take it, so it's losing some of its appeal. I think Petey really needs an established second finisher if they are serious about pushing him, for the times he faces people who won't take that bump. Like Kurt Angle...

Why is it called Tiger Driver 98? For the year? I've seen Jaguar Yokota use that move as early as 1985.

Posted By: guest (Guest) on December 12, 2007 at 07:51 AM

Jaguar Yokota...wow, we're going OLD school puro here. You're going to have to bear with me, I'm a bit fuzzy on this. I know there's a Tiger Driver '91, '95 and '98, and possibly a '89 as well...I think they are named after the year the person first used them. Misawa's ego is big enough for him to claim invention of the move even if he didn't actually invent it.

Smooth Moves volume 8 – DDT

No, not Dramatic Dream Team, the small Japanese promotion that gives belts to inanimate objects. Wait, doesn't Vince do that too?Head was Hardcore champ, and both Yokozuna and Hogan...never mind. Also, not dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane , the (in)famous insecticide that was at the root of last week's clue, which nobody got right. What the DDT actually stands for in wrestling move terms is an area of some debate: I've heard everything from Dastardly Death Trip to Demonic Death Trap to Demon Drop Technique to Drop Dead Twice to Damien's Dinner Time. As the last one suggests, Jake "the Snake" Roberts is widely credited with the innovation of the move, some say accidentally. He has acknowledged in interviews that the chemical was the inspiration for the naming of the move, but when asked what it meant, would only reply "The end." Given Jake's fondness for substances of a mind-altering nature, it is entirely possible he's forgotten. If he ever knew.

A very simple move to execute, which lends itself to numerous variants, the DDT has nonetheless suffered greatly over the years. Perhaps only the power slam can come close to the way the DDT has fallen from finisher to setup to transition move. When Jake was riding high in the midcard, either nobody or one person kicked out after a DDT. A good way to start an argument on any wrestling forum, in fact, is to state that Undertaker kicked out of Jake's DDT. Once Jake left the WWF, the DDT was seldom seen or used. Gradually it crept back into people's movesets, but not often as a finish. Rocky Maivia, as he was then, had a particularly nice floatover version which looked like a million bucks. Over in ECW, meanwhile, Raven and Tommy Dreamer, among others, were using it week in and week out. Cactus Jack occasionally busted it out in WCW. Others may well have done so, but I wasn't a WCW fan back then. Now, of course, everyone and his dog will break one out, and only the more innovative ones actually end a match (Edge, Orton and Kennedy, occasionally Dreamer).

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the DDT stopped being such a feared move. There was some talk in the early part of this decade that the move had been banned, but by then it had already lost a lot of its mystique. It's also clearly not the case today, if indeed it ever was. When Jake hit the short-arm clothesline and did the "Circle the wagons" gesture in the air, you knew the next thing you'd see was kick, slap on the back into a DDT. He always slapped the guy on the back first. Likely to warn them of the impending drop, which could be quite nasty to the victim's neck and Jake's coccyx if it wasn't properly co-ordinated.

Before we move on to the variants, I wanted to include a quick note about selling. A DDT, because it is so easy to execute and used so often, relies more on selling of the move than most others. RVD is probably the best I have seen, as he does almost a full headstand before slumping to the mat. The Rock and HBK also sold it well. After all, it legit hurts getting dropped like that even if you're expecting it...

Snap DDT When I first saw this move, in a Smackdown vs Raw game, I named it the kickstart DDT, because it normally involves swinging the inside leg back first to increase momentum. Lita used this version as her last finisher, to great effect I might add.

Implant DDT First seen in the WWE as Gangrel's finisher, and now being used by Edge as the Edgecution, and by Lacey in SHIMMER. It starts as a regular DDT but involves pulling the victim's lower body up off the mat a little, to increase the angle of impact. I used to use this as my finisher in WWE video games before they included the Burning Hammer. Here's Edge hitting it on Tommy Dreamer through a garbage can:



Double-arm DDT Everybody's favourite glorified stuntman, Mick Foley, made this move famous as Dude Love and Cactus Jack. Danny Doring, the ECW mainstay, also used it. I always thought Foley made it look kind of soft though.

Samurai Driver Named after El Samurai, who invented it, this move is more of a counter to a powerbomb than an actual DDT variant, but Essa Rios used it as a finisher in WWE. See, he did more than introduce Lita to us! Basically, as you go up for the powerbomb , you hook in a front facelock, and bring the opponent down with you head-first as you fall.

Baseball Slide DDT I have only seen this done once, and I was involved in the match. My partner was on the outside, when one of our opponents slid through the ropes, grabbed his head on the way through, and dropped him. I knew it was coming, but seeing it done was insane. Apparently Rey used to do it in ECW and Mexico, but I couldn't find a clip.

Legsweep DDT Basically just a DDT with a legsweep instead of just falling back, but it looks so much more impactful due to the speed of the fall. CM Punk and Paul London have both used a version with a hammer lock, known as the Devil Lock DDT and London's Calling respectively, although neither is likely to use it in WWE.

Fireman's Carry DDT Also known as the F-5. Yes, it's a DDT variant, but Brock did it so fast it's hard to see. One of the most visually impressive moves of the last few years in the WWE.



Damn I miss Brock. Animal Brock managed by Heyman, though.

Tornado DDT Another popular version, which sees the attacker sitting on the top turnbuckle, grabbing the opponent's head, jumping and turning in mid-air to drop the victim in a DDT. When hit and sold correctly, it looks elegant. Funaki uses this as his finisher, calling it the Rising Sun, but of course to see it, he'd have to actually win a match. There's also an armbar version used by Nunzio which can be transitioned fairly easily into an armbar submission.

Before we move on to the more eccentric variants, I wanted to point out a couple of things. First, although the Scorpion Death Drop and so forth are technically DDTs, I will be dealing with inverted ones in their own column. Second, to prevent a flood of emails, I haven't mentioned Raven's version. Simply because it's no different from any other DDT. He didn't invent it, he didn't revolutionise it, he did nothing with it that a hundred others didn't do. Flame away.

Rope-assisted DDT A relatively new development, this DDT involves dragging the opponent, who is outside the ring on the apron, head-first part of the way through the ropes, then dropping them in a DDT. Although technically no higher than a standard DDT, the angle is supposed to make it that much nastier. Ken Kennedy.......Kennedy and Randy Orton currently perform this move, but it's more who they've hit it on (RVD and HBK, chiefly) that make it look so effective.

Jumping DDT Also known as the spike DDT, this variant requires the opponent to be on the mat, with the attacker on the top rope, who then jumps onto the victim and executes the DDT. Maven was the last person to use this move in the WWE, although Ace Steel and a couple of others who escape me have used it. VERY hard to hit correctly as it requires perfect judgement on the jump, but when that does happen, it's beautiful.

Moonsault DDT Even more contrived than the Canadian Destroyer, the moonsault DDT requires your opponent to be backing you, while you climb to the top and moonsault into a DDT position. It looks amazing, and requires great timing, but it's just not a position you find yourself in often enough. Like the 619, or the axe kick.

Phoenix 720 DDT A rarity: a move innovated by a British wrestler. Jody Fleisch, once regarded as the best high-flier on the planet, is not only the only person to hit this move successfully, but I believe the only one to even attempt it. It's so good, that there can be no discussion after this move.

Some of you may have noticed the shortage of YouTube clips this week. There are two reasons for that. One, I had a few emails from people who claimed that I never did any writing, just put a bunch of clips together. This, hopefully, will show that to be false. The second reason is, well, I found this clip, see, and it really speaks for itself...



And that, ladies and gentlemen, is game, set and match. I'll be back next week with EOP week, as I said earlier. Remember to send in your choices for Bump of the Year and Move of the Year, along with any other feedback.

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Until next week...

Lansdellicious – Out.