The Way I C It 01.14.07: Tag Team Smooth Moves Part Deux!

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 01.14.2008

Wilcox returns for more of the same, plus bumper feedback, and thoughts on Hitman, the Bret Hart story.

Greetings humanity! It's been a hell of a week for The Lansdellicious One here at 411mania. It started last Sunday with my Instant Access for Final Resolution. Monday saw The Way I C It and the always-awesome Hidden Highlights. Then later in the week, my thoughts on WWE in 2008 (part one and part 2), RoH's weekend shows and TNA in 2008. The high point of the week for me, though, was scoring the upset win over Big Boss Larry Csonka in Buy...or Sell!

That said, and since I am typing this with two strained tendons in my left hand (don't ask), let us dive right in. HAJIME!

The Way U C Me

First, by email from JBBTHWK:

I know of a move you can add in Part 2 of the Tag Team Moves Column, the Tornado-Plex that I first remember being used by La Resistance and now by Tomko/Bernard & Tomko/Styles. Also a move you Cannot leave out when discussing Tag Team Moves, the Conchairto. You've got to have that involved. and if you talked about the Doomsday Device This week, you have to talk about the Steinerline Next week, it's just fair to go from one Legendary Tag Team to another.

You know, I was never a big fan of the tornadoplex, or the variants like the one Cryme Tyme used to use. It's not bad, but it just doesn't look like it hurts! As for the Con-chair-to, I won't include it because, quite simply, it's not a legal move. It was incredibly popular, a great feud-builder and a heat machine, but I don't consider it a move. More like an attack. The Steinerline...well, there's not much difference between that and the Doomsday Device, is there?

From D-Nick X by email:

Hi Chris, here I found some clips of Al Snow as European Champion, representing the diferent countries.
Here are the links:

Al Snow vs X-Pac, here he represents Transylvania: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vs98bKXgBsw
Al Snow vs Test, here he represents Greece: http://youtube.com/watch?v=t1HXZoiAzbk
Al Snow vs Albert, here he represents Hong-Kong: http://youtube.com/watch?v=d4_Jm1ks34s
Al Snow vs Tazz, here he represents Germany: http://youtube.com/watch?v=M0VHJp8nsNA

And Chris I think that in the article of tag team moves you should have included the Spanish Fly.

That´s all, keep up the good work...


Once again, an off-the-cuff remark generates a ton of feedback. Jennifer also sent along the Transylvania link, thanks to you both. I mentioned the Spanish Fly in my Moonsault edition of Smooth Moves.

To the Comments section:

I believe I remember seeing London and Kendrick use it on a jobber tag team on Velocity. They busted the guys nose if I'm not mistaken... which I might be.

Posted By: Will (Guest) on January 07, 2008 at 07:25 PM

I believe Will is talking about Total Elimination being used in the WWE here. This incident rings a vague bell. What I'd really love is a clip, if anyone can find one...

Firstly, that top rope vertabreaker onto the chair was insane. I like Necro but he'll end up getting killed doing that. Anyway, a double team move I would like to nominate would be Jack Evans and Roderick Strong's Ode to the Bulldogs. It is an incredible move and is probably on Youtube somewhere. Keep up the good work.

Posted By: Darcy (Guest) on January 07, 2008 at 11:15 PM

I'd be interested to see if there's any bump that Necro won't take. Dude just doesn't seem to care. With regards to your suggestion...I could not find any clips of this move anywhere. For those who don't know what it is...well, Strong would list victim A into a Torture Rack position while victim B was on the mat behind him. Evans would go the the top, hit a double stomp on victim A, then reverse momentum into a corkscrew moonsault or some such onto victim B, while Strong dropped victim A into a powerbomb. As with most of Evans' high spots, it looks beautiful when it comes off correctly, as he hardly seems to pause in the double stomp before flying the other way.

3 Count (Namely Shane Helms and Shannon Moore) had some brutal tag moves, one I distinctly remember seeing (and never seeing again) was a backslide and top rope legdrop combonation. Looked totally brutal. Also, VEG-O-MATIC.

Posted By: Rick (Guest) on January 08, 2008 at 04:05 AM

God yes, I remember Helms and Moore hitting that, I believe in a cruiserweight tag title match against Styles and Paris. I also think I remember Moore hitting the legdrop into a vertebreaker from Helms, which was even greater. As for the veg-o-matic...I'm almost ashamed to admit that I don't remember it. Is that the side suplex/legdrop combo?

Regarding the fans trashing Nigel, it was just a small (but loud) percentage of fans who were being idiots. There's far more fans who care for Nigel than there are haters.

Posted By: Super D-Meister (Guest) on January 08, 2008 at 05:27 AM

And that is as it should be. However, it's the nature of journalism to focus on the vocal minority. Nobody wants to read about something everyone agrees with! I bet the people who were heckling Nigel are the same ones who boo Cena, or call Larry the HHH of 411mania.

I remember seeing London and Kendrick executing the "Get Well Soon" (enziguri/downward spiral combo) For my money, my favorites are the Cop Killa/ Ghetto stomp combo, The Veg-O- Matic, and How could anyone forget ECW's Nova and Chetti with the TIDAL WAVE (Guillotine Leg drop/ Frog splash combo with both of them leaping off the same top turnbuckle!) BTW Chris, The Al Snow relocating Hong Kong thing is even funnier when you realize that during that time, HK was still under rule of the british commonwealth, therefore making Hong Kong a part of England (technically)

Posted By: Rashid (Guest) on January 08, 2008 at 03:47 PM

Some great choices here. The Get Well Soon is an example of two good moves not combining well, though. The enziguiri really doesn't add any momentum to the spiral, it's just an add-on. The Tidal Wave was seventeen flavours of awesomeness wrapped in awesome with a side of awesome. The Hong Kong stuff is actually referenced during the match in the clip above.

What about Londrick's Sliced Bread #2/Powerbomb combo that they did one Smackdown? I think they hit it twice to a HUGE pop.

Posted By: Registered (Guest) on January 08, 2008 at 08:43 PM

I'm sure I've seen them hit it more than once, and it really does look great.

I remember the London/Kendrick manuever and marked like crazy when it happened. I can't remember if MCMG have hit the stereo super kicks, but they've definitely hit opponents with various other tandem kicks.

Posted By: innosourceatl (Guest) on January 09, 2008 at 09:49 AM

I know the Justin Credible/X-Pac team of X-Factor used it as a finisher. Calling it X marks the Spot I believe.

Al Snow relocated to England as well. Regal was helping out on commentary at the time, and ended up being handed a picture of himself by Snow. I think that was the most hilarious thing to come out of that gimmick. As for tag team moves, how about the Con-Chair-to or the Spike Piledriver?

Posted By: Tigerpaw28 (Guest) on January 10, 2008 at 09:25 PM

England and Italy were my two favourite of the Al Snow gimmicks. The spike piledriver eh? You should probably scroll down...

'd like to see you comment on Power and Glory's Superplex/Big Splash combo. You are right about timing being everything, the first time I saw them do it, the timing was on and it was awesome. After that, Roma started waiting for Herc to hit the Superplex before he jumped off the top rope, and it sucked.

Posted By: Guest#9677 (Guest) on January 08, 2008 at 09:57 AM

Well, you're going to be happy!

Smooth Moves – The Tag Teams, part the Second!

Due to the immense fun of and very favourable response to last week's feature, I am proud to bring you part 2. After all, how could a feature on tandem moves not have 2 parts? Once again with me to analyse these moves is the man whose Thoughts come from the Top Rope, the inimitable Daniel Wilcox! We're going to switch it this week and start with my three picks. Why three? Because I said so.

A move I almost included last week, but decided against because of space, is the PowerPlex. The perfect example of how great timing makes or breaks a tandem move, it was first seen in the US being used by the tag team Power and Glory. Hercules Hernandez, presumably the Power part of the team, would position one opponent for a superplex, while the much-maligned Paul Roma went to the opposite corner and waited. Herc would snap off the superplex and, at least to begin with, Roma's big splash would be a second behind the impact of the superplex. When the timing was on, it looked incredible. However, as stated in the feedback above, after a while Power and Glory stopped trying to time it.

I did a little research, and it turns out that on a minor show, Roma jumped a little early for the splash portion, and ended up landing on the victim while the superplex was still finishing. The angle of the jobber's back was such that Roma hurt him pretty bad. As a result, they were asked to stop trying to time it perfectly. This was possibly the first example of a single injury causing Vince and company to ban a move. You can see the move at the end of this clip:



D-Dub: These are the kind of moves that look really good whenever the team really gets the timing right, but can still look effective even if wrestler B is a few seconds late. What makes this work is that there's no way the opponent can recover in time following the superplex to avoid the splash and a pin is usually inevitable.

Lansdellicious: In the early 80s, there was a team making the rounds called the Minnesota Wrecking Crew II. Mean Mike Enos and Wayne Bloom made their way to the AWA, which is the first place I saw them. They were known there as the Destruction Crew, and managed by Jimmy Valiant. I couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 at the time, a complete mark. They Irish whipped their opponent, and one of the Crew did a standard back body drop…only for his partner to leap, grab the victim and drop him from height on his head. They called it the Wrecking Ball, and it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I think this move alone cemented my love for both double-team moves and people being dropped on their heads.

This was also my first recollection of what I now realize was an angle. The AWA President acted quickly to ban any move where contact is made with an opponent elevated above shoulder height, a decision aimed squarely at the Wrecking Ball which was kayfabe putting people out of action every week. This of course lead to referee-distracting shenanigans, and a variant being developed where they wouldn't catch the guy until he was almost on the mat.
It's surprising to me that we haven't seen a team try and copy this move. Even when the Destruction Crew moved to the WWF and became the Beverley Brothers, that bastion of great theme music and lousy capes, they didn't try it. Not that Vince would have let them try it more than once. I can't think of any indy teams who have tried it either, which is even more surprising given how crazy some of those guys are.

I looked everywhere for a clip and came up blank. However, every time I've ever said that, one of you wonderful readers has helped me out. So I'm turning this one over to you.

D-Dub: I can't say that I have ever seen this move utilized before but it sounds incredible. From Chris' description it sounds similar to the spot used last Survivor Series where CM Punk hit a frankensteiner on John Morrison, only for The Miz to catch Morrison and powerbomb him. I absolutely loved that move so I'm sure I would have loved this too.

Lansdellicious: If we're talking old-timers, and being dropped on your head, how could I not mention the Spike piledriver? Banned now in the WWE, but popular in various incarnations in the indies, it involves wrestler A holding his opponent in the piledriver position, while wrestler B climbs to the top rope (normally), grabs the victims feet, and jumps as wrestler A sits down, increasing the downward pressure on the spine. There are variants of this move where wrestler B stands on the mat and pushes down (stuff piledriver), or wrestler A holds the victim in the Tombstone position.

Although most analysts agree that the move was invented in Japan, nobody seems to know by whom. What is for sure is that it was popularised in the WWE by the team of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, who came to be known as the Brainbusters, partly because of this move. It is often used now in independents when heels want to injure someone. Adam Pearce and Shane Hagadorn have been known to use it in Ring of Honor, most notably on Julius Smokes during the Ring of Homicide storyline leading to Homicide's title shot at Final Battle 2006. Before the title shot, Smokes returned and helped hit the spike piledriver on Hagadorn. Here's the Brainbusters executing it:



D-Dub: This move is so vicious and that's why I love it. What makes it a great move is that the team utilizes the extra wrestler to simply increase the pain brought about by an already devastating grapple. Not much more to say here other than if a team could use this in the E, it should be Cade and Murdoch because it would suit them to a T.

HOT TAG!

D-Dub: One of my favourite double-team moves of all-time is one that was only used for a very short time as the team that utilized it were only a team for a couple of months. Both men were submission experts and had submission moves as their finishing moves as singles wrestlers. So of course when they teamed up, it only made sense for them to put those two moves together and come up with the ultimate submission move; The Crippling Walls of Crossface Jericho or more simply the Walls of Jericho/Crippler Crossface combination. This move looked about as bad ass as bad ass wrestling moves come as any one who found themselves in it were almost certain to be tapping out within seconds. What made this look so great is that every part of the body was being worked – the legs, the back, the face, the neck and an arm – leaving them just one hand to tap out with – genius!

Despite Benoit and Jericho only being a tag team for a few short months in 2002, variations of the move have been used ever since. Most notably, when Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit found themselves as tag team partners in 2002, a Crippler Crossface/Ankle Lock combination was frequently utilized, though I don't think it ever looked as good as the Walls/Crossface original. We've also seen two men apply the same submission hold on one opponent – if memory serves Edge and Rey Mysterio utilized a double Ankle Lock on Kurt Angle during the era of the ‘SmackDown Six.' I'd love to see some form of this double-team be brought back to mainstream wrestling as they always look incredible. Alas, with submission wrestling no longer that prolific in WWE or even TNA, it doesn't seem like we'll be seeing greatness like this repeated any time soon.

Lansdellicious: I also remember matches in ECW with Guido putting on the Sicilian Crab while Super Crazy applied a Camel Clutch...double submissions have always been great to see. As for the Crossface Walls, you'd expect a clip to be easy to find, but alas no.

D-Dub: This next move is a little hard to trace back to its origins because it is such a basic combination move and one that has been around for a long time. The High/Low is a move that sees one tag partner hit a strike on a opponent high up on his body while the other partner hits him low. Chris mentioned last week Total Elimination which is one of the better variations of the move. What I really like about this move is that it is so basic and anyone can perform it safely. All it requires is a little timing to make it work and look good. The other advantage is that it is pretty much impossible to reverse – you can't duck and you can't go over the move at the same time so either way you're going to get taken out. Possible my favourite variation is the more simplistic clothesline/leg sweep combo that is currently used by Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch on Raw. It takes a couple old school moves and makes them look good. Of course if you're a fan of flashier wrestling you'd enjoy the aforementioned Total Elimination or X-treme Domination, a variation used by the team Shazarian (Michael Shane and Kazarian).

Lansdellicious: I wasn't a fan of the High-Low at first, it just seemed boring. The more I saw it, though, the more I came to love it. As D-Dub so rightly said, it's another example of two old-school, simple moves being combined with great timing to look much better than they do independently. Cade and Murdoch hit it here, in their Titantron:



That's pretty much game, set and match, boys and girls. I'd write more but it's taken me an inordinate amount of time to get this far, with the whole tendon thing. Still, I've got enough left to comment on the Bret Hart autobiography I'm reading. Although it appears random at times, with Bret going off on tangents to give us little anecdotes, I've found it engrossing and impossible to put down. The frankness with which Bret mentions the drugs, steroids, womanising, pill popping and drunken vandalism is somewhat shocking. However, it's interesting to read of the mutual respect and even friendship that existed between Bret and the members of the Kliq around Mania IX and X. Bottom line: Buy it. Until next week...

Lansdellicious – out. SURIMATE!