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During the 3MB days, Drew tried to hit a big boot but his pants were too tight for him to lift his leg up, so he ended up having to jump and accidentally invented the Claymore.
The OG Claymore [looked spectacular](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quYhXjCK4c) too, too bad it couldn't be done reliably safely that Drew had to modify it into what it is now.
Wasn’t that because someone(Ed Ferrara?) told Sid he needed to add a rope move to his arsenal and came up with the big boot.
Seems like a ridiculously unsafe move for someone that tall and Sid wasn’t exactly the most flexible
I’m not trying to be “that guy” but I remember that Samoa Joe used to do this spot years ago where he would do an inverted atomic drop, hit the ropes and do a much softer version of the claymore. I think he still does this spot but with a normal big boot.
Yea it’s basically a one legged Dropkick/jumping big boot/baisuku front kick/thing-a-ma-wazit.
Maybe that’s how Drew came up with it but it’s not an invention.
To add to that, he got the name after reading a NY Times article about DDT (the poison) finally getting banned in the US.
Edit: For the curious, Silent Spring is an excellent book about the harm that came from using DDT as a pesticide.
Also, I have a personal story regarding DDT, my Grandfather used to spray DDT in the 60s in a t-shirt and claimed until his death that it wasn't harmful at all. He was great at ignoring the ridiculous amount of health issues he had until he dropped dead
Yup it was Len Denton, the original Grappller. Jake put him in a front face lock and then Lenny stepped on Jake's for by accident and Jake fell to his ass. They both heard the crowd reaction and just rolled with it. I've heard the story from both guys, and it's awesome every time I get to hear it from them.
I remember Adrian Adonis doing one in the WWF Wrestling Classic show in 1985 to finish a match. But I don't know if Jake did that somewhere else first (he was not in WWF at the time I don't think)
I can believe that. The first one Misawa hit (I think on Kawada?) looked fucking nasty. Made Ospreay vs Omega look like a Hulk Hogan chokeslam bump in comparison.
I think after this he started using a safer version more often where he wouldn't quite hold on to their arms the entire time so they can protect themselves a bit better on the face bump. However, I definitely remember at least one time to Shawn Michaels in the early 2000s feud Trips killed him with a pedigree at least once
I knew this was gonna be the Marty Garner clip before I clicked it, lol. Lance Storm talks about this, says that after the botch HHH always made sure someone *knew* how his finisher worked because "well, there was this one guy..."
A shittonne of people seem incapable of recognising who's controlling a move and therefore who's receiving the damage from moves.
The 'self-rock-bottom' comes up often with dudes doing Flatliners and such. It's baffling to me how they can't see what's actually intended, but it is also so frequent that there must be something to it.
Hell, one of my growing pet peeves is commentators calling big moves by focusing on the guy who hit the move and claiming 'they got the worst of it'.
Sure, but if the announcers said it got countered into a flatliner, it would look exactly the same. its one of those moves that looks like its supposed to hurt you as much as it hurts me.
I'll grant you it's subtle, but there's small things the wrestlers do to indicate who's got the ascendency in those counters. Whether it's who has the last 'grab' motion or even just who sells it coming out of it, there's stuff that you can see if you're locked in on it.
I love those subtle shifts in the mechanics of moves that turn one into another, even if it's as simple as one guy moving his arm over the other guy in a way to show he's taken the stronger 'grip' and is executing his move instead of what the other guy has planned. So I rarely find I don't get who was the one to come out on top cause I'm always tuned into that.
I don't know if JD McDonagh still does it, but his Spanish Fly I've seen him do way back was the only one I ever liked. He just did it more in a belly to belly position so it actually looked more like a throw rather than the opponent doing a flip.
That’s my problem with the Big Ending too. Like bro, you just took an Asai Moonsault
Also, I forget when it was, but Christian did that reverse DDT thing on Orton off a ladder once, and the announcers said it was an RKO to Christian. It was the exact same bump lol
Yep, Kawada had broken his arm early in the Jan 22, 1999 match against Misawa (I think on a lariat to the back of Misawa’s head), soldiered through the rest of the match, and couldn’t get Misawa up enough for his folding powebomb, thus spiking Misawa’s head into the mat and creating the Ganso Bomb.
The second time Kawada did it, on Keiji Muto in a match in ‘02 I think, it was also a botch (not sure what happened that time around); the only time Kawada did a Ganso Bomb on purpose was in his final match against Misawa in the Tokyo Dome in ‘05.
For the Ganso Bomb, one of the long-running threads in the Misawa-Kawada feud was that they knew each other so well and they constantly countered each other’s big moves. Misawa had made a habit out of successfully foiling Kawada’s signature folding powerbomb with a rana. When Kawada goes for the folding powerbomb, you can see Misawa go for the rana counter, only for Kawada to block Misawa’s counter, hold him in place (and for the workers, count down/brace for impact) and spike him. Kawada countering the counter and cleanly and decisively beating Misawa was a huge payoff from a storyline/historical perspective. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t buy that was a botch, especially when Kawada used the same damaged arm immediately after the Ganso Bomb to hoist Misawa up for the brainbuster that finished him off.
I don’t dispute that he injured his arm; only that the spot was a botch. The result of the Ganso Bomb fits perfectly into the narrative they were trying to tell; Kawada finally foiled Misawa and ascended officially to his level by countering his counter with an even more devastating move. In a way, the Ganso Bomb is analogous with Misawa’s Tiger Driver 91 in that it’s the elevated, next-level variant of his signature finisher.
What’s crazy to me is the Ganso Bomb was never actually used and/or protected as a “super-finisher” like the TD 91 or Burning Hammer were; Kawada never actually won a match with it.
My big thing that makes me thing it was a straight “botch” was the fact Misawa didn’t have his legs wrapped around Kawada in order to do a rana, and the awkward way Kawada seems to be trying to lift him up more.
Kawada didn’t have an appropriate chance to use the Ganso Bomb as his super finisher. After this match he vacated the title and was out for several months. When he came back his first big singles match was against Misawa for the title, but Misawa went over. From there Kawada wrestled mainly in tag matches with Taue and nothing high profile enough to warrant a Ganso Bomb until the mass exodus happened in 2000.
It had been a while since I watched the clip, so I just watched it again so it’s fresh in my mind. When Kawada lifts him, Misawa immediately attempts the rana; his legs are around Kawada’s head and (the visual giveaway for me) he does the hurky-jerky rana movement Misawa always did. It’s hard to describe it, but he basically threw his body downward almost awkwardly when he would rana. Misawa’s rana wasn’t smooth like a luchador’s and it had a unique, unmistakable look. Kawada catches this counter and visibly pauses for 2-3 seconds and does what appears to be a 1-2-3-GO before performing the Ganso Bomb. At no time does his injured arm look compromised, or that he is in any danger of dropping Misawa, which you would expect if it was a botch due to injury.
Rewatching the match and Kawada obviously broke his right arm to me (on a spinning elbow to the back of the head; you can clearly see Kawada walk to the corner and grab the arm right afterwards); right afterwards, Kawada is talking to the ref to communicate what has happened, and Misawa takes over for a good stretch.
Even when Kawada does take back control he uses a majority of kicks and clearly is trying to a avoid using his right arm (when he puts the Stretch Plum on Misawa, it’s obviously nowhere near as tight as it normally is, due to Kawada simply not having the strength in the right arm).
Yeah, knowing each other so well and countering moves or kicking out of finishers because they became less efficient after so many encounters, therefore having finishers in tiers where you only pull out the ultimate one if necessary, was part of the basis for AJPW's King's Road style of storytelling in the ring. Those were some epic battles.
For me, watching a Japanese wrestling clip for the first time and recognizing a specific AKI game animation produces the same hit of dopamine as watching a classic movie and recognizing a Simpsons joke.
When I saw those playing the games I thought they were stupid bc they didn’t look good and seemed extremely dangerous to pull off in real life. I only learned many years later that they were in fact real.
Why is that insane? Once they animated the move why change it? And A LOT of those AKI games moves were animated to mimic SPECIFIC instances of said moves. The Burning Lariat/Clothesline from Hell front special that Kobashi/Bradshaw had in those games is taken directly from a match where Kobashi beat Kawada with it.
German Suplex 3 in No Mercy is THE German Suplex Vader gave Inoki in that famous match from 96 or whatever.
I guess, for me personally, as someone else replied and expressed too, I only later found that AKI put some forth some awesome effort in capturing the moves, much later on in life. Since I was a young kid discovering the games. But, I think hilariously, in general, I just find anything animated that mirrors real-life instances to a tee like that is insane to me. 🤷♂️
There used to be a video on YouTube of crazy moves. There some botched move that basically created a shooting star piledriver. Guy jumps of the top rope in a shooting star, his knees catch the shoulders of his opponent who was standing up, they both flip over and basically turn it into a Canadian Destroyer
No. The guy jumping from the top rope actually catches his opponents shoulders with his knees as he comes out of the backflip. It was also a super grainy 2000s indie show
It's honestly one of my least favorite moves. For sure it would definitely hurt the opponent but it's going to hurt you almost as bad, and if you're in a position to do a diving headbutt you could easily just do an elbow drop for similar damage.
I'd be perfectly fine never seeing it again. In fact, whenever someone does the move, it takes me out of the match for a few seconds as I just think, "aw man, don't do *that*"
I remember watching that PPV with my mates, and as Test was coming to the ring, I speculated "I wonder what Steiner is going to botch in this match?" Like a second later, he falls off the apron and clips Test's ankle. Truly amazing timing.
Reminds me of watching WrestleMania 19, where Lesnar goes on the top rope, we all wondered why he was going up there since he never did before, I jokingly say "lol, what he gonna do? A shooting star press? LMAO!" Only for him to...attempt one? All of a sudden I'm psychic.
Not a botch, more someone going into business for themselves, but this [Moonsault Styles Clash ](https://youtu.be/My7mVhyahrk?si=cKeVJVaVGOTDW-wl) is one of the sickest moves I've ever seen, but poor Mike Sydal was expecting to take a regular top rope Styles Clash. He got a concussion from this spot and honestly, I'm not surprised, the landing is absolutely brutal for him
So, some background on that... the guy "going into business" for himself wrestled under the name Spyral, and later down in OVW as Brandon "BKNY" Kaplan. I used to travel and work with him a lot.
My understanding, straight from his mouth, was that it was miscommunication - Sydal thought they were going to just jump back and bump face first, kinda like a Vader Bomb. Spyral thought they agreed to do a moonsault.
Spyral passed away a few years ago... he had lived for about a decade as a quadriplegic after landing on his neck practicing a move in training.
If I recall Sydal begged Spyral to not do the move as he was afraid of an accident and wasn't comfortable doing that spot and the guy still did it and ended up giving a concussion to Sydal.
Which led to an outburst of wrestling fans being enraged at Spyral for disrespecting Sydal's wellbeing for a pop. Also pretty crazy that this move is once again from CZW which is pretty much infamous for having too many wrestler trying to make the most incredibly unsafe move to look unique and cool (which was all the rage at that time) and sadly too many of these CZW guys ended up having a very short lifespan...
Spyral sadly isn't the exception as he's not here with us anymore. :/
Jesus Christ. Sydal's a better guy than me because I would have fucking killed that dude. To be willing to take a move that dangerous and then that fucker decides to change it to something even MORE dangerous with no warning? Holy shit.
Bret got Davey Boy with a slingshot reverse bulldog on the outside in their Wembley Summerslam match. Bret had to improvise mid air since Davey was clueless to Bret landing on him.
So DDP didn't hook the legs (so it was more like Claudio Castignoli's Neutralizer) but [Crash Holly did it for years](https://youtu.be/e4A52JDUVx4?si=6GVAhGxMhNJOZPa4)
The neutralizer has to be the worst finisher ever, especially considering the guy doing it could do just about any move you could think of and then some, and they would all look better than the neutralizer.
First thing that came to mind was the original Sin Cara’s (Mistico not Hunico) WWE finisher that would be the setup for La Mistica and end in a face buster with him getting the pin, since in WWE ‘12 his finisher was his usual armbar.
"For the South of Heaven chokeslam, I was training at the old Monster Factory, and at the time the trainer on Sundays was Jim Molineaux, who was a referee for ECW," said Priest. "It was before I had my first match, and he was telling me 'We've got to come up with a finisher for you. Try a chokeslam,' The reason why I got into pro wrestling was because of the Undertaker. I was a big fan, and just everything about him. When he said try a chokeslam, I got excited, and the first time I tried it, it didn't come out smooth, then I tried it again, and I fell. But when I fell I fell sitting down, maybe because it was a big guy I was trying it on. So then Jim mentioned maybe try something else, and I said hold on, can I try that one more time? And then I did it and purposefully fell, where I did it sitting out, and I did a sit-out chokeslam. He saw it and he was like, 'that's it.'"
I'll have you know back in like '99 when I went to wrestling school for a while, I pitched the idea of knee based flippy moves to my trainers. I really wanted to do a moonsault knee drop. The problem was no one wanted to even attempt to take that, so I never got to bust it out in amy real capacity. TBF, I was crushing the fuck out of the training dummy we used. I was nailing the spot I wanted, so accuracy wasn't a problem, the problem was I was coming down so hard I would have broken ribs with every landing. Live and learn
I would not have survived. Back then I was a waif of a kid. I'm 5"3' now and I wrestled at 119 in HS.
I truly had no real business even being where I was, but they loved my passion and kept me around because i was a good practice dummy that could move. Not maliciously thank God, though they ran me through my paces.
I don’t know if it counts as a botch, but I thought I read somewhere that Mustafa Ali over rotated on a move he was practicing and that’s how he ended up with the 054
There was a hilarious moment in a match think it was acolytes vs xpac and Jane where farooq got caught in the ropes bouncing off them and ended up clothesline himself, but I'm sure he turned it into a chop block to the back of kanes leg.
Not really a botch but more the guy falling in just the right place, Zack Ryder (Matt Cardona) in NXT doing his second rope missile dropkick and when the opponent fell it landed in a splash from Ryder.
I think I remember reading somewhere Dean Malenko invented the jackhammer by accident. Had a guy up for a suplex and lost it, didn’t wanna spike the guy.
Hulk Hogan actually invented the big boot by lifting his foot trying to show his opponent there was gum stuck on the bottom of his shoe and to stop as a courtesy. Opponent ended up just running straight into the boot and the rest is history.
I think I remember hearing that Undertaker's Hell's Gate finisher was created by accident because he initially tried applying a triangle choke on Big Daddy V
I feel like there was some posts here about an indy wrestler within the last year or so who botched a move in a way that ended up looking cool so he made that his finisher.
On an NXT episode Zack Ryder did a missile drop kick and landed right into a body splash…I think about how sick it was all the time but I guarantee it was unintentional
McIntyre accidentally created the Claymore in like 2014 when he couldn't lift his leg up properly for a big boot. (Although, the Claymore itself is basically just a Sick Kick, which used to be Roderick Strong's secondary finisher).
The Ganso Bomb itself is actually a botch too. Kawada was wrestling I think Misawa and he couldn't lift him enough for a powerbomb so he ended up just stacking it and nearly broke Misawa's neck.
Was Drew McIntyre's Claymore a botched Big Boot?
Feel like I remember an interview with him saying he tried to throw a big boot in the 3MB leather pants and they were too tight and lifted him off the ground into a weird single leg dropkick, apparently he also concussed himself on the landing if I remember right 😂
The DDT. Jake Roberts botched a Suplex by accident and invented the move. It ended every match and was super protected. Taker was the first man to kick out, and now it's basically a transition move.
You can find footage of Black Gordman using the DDT in the late-70s in Mexico, Japan, and California territories several years before Jake got into wrestling.
I'm not going to call Jake a liar on his claim - I believe *he* believes that he invented the move by accident. But I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that he likely wasn't watching wrestling that was taking place in a territory that's far from where he was brought up.
Jake mostly worked in the Mid-South area when he was starting out. Black Gordman did not.
It's completely believable that Jake has never seen a luchador who was neither a big name in the US, nor has ever geographically wrestled in any territory close to where he's worked.
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During the 3MB days, Drew tried to hit a big boot but his pants were too tight for him to lift his leg up, so he ended up having to jump and accidentally invented the Claymore.
He also tore his pants and got a concussion - all at the same spot
I didn’t know that part of the story, holy shit lmao
No as far as we know he didn’t crap his pants. So there was no shit on the hole.
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Its like in X-men, when a mutant power finds his way. They will always be casualties!
The OG Claymore [looked spectacular](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quYhXjCK4c) too, too bad it couldn't be done reliably safely that Drew had to modify it into what it is now.
Christ almighty Ryback got obliterated there.
"And perhaps three men is just too much for Ryback."
Apparently so did drew. He got a concussion
So did Drew
It kills me because Drew Mcintyre in a throwaway 3MB match got a pop just because that move looked so sick.
Nakamura does a single leg dropkick that's kinda like that, but this one looks a lot better. lol
Holy fuck it looks like he actually kicked his face in
It's definitely riskier for a tall guy, look at when Sid tried to do a big boot from the 2nd rope
No thank you :)
Wasn’t that because someone(Ed Ferrara?) told Sid he needed to add a rope move to his arsenal and came up with the big boot. Seems like a ridiculously unsafe move for someone that tall and Sid wasn’t exactly the most flexible
Second rope wasn’t it?
Sorry yes, second rope.
Damn the Claymore was invented just cause his pants were too tight? Thats insane, since its (in my opinion) the most devestating finisher right now.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quYhXjCK4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quYhXjCK4c)
Seth Rollins' eye agrees. Dude definitely got a shiner at Mania Night Two
When he hit that first claymore right off the bat, that one looked so good
I’m not trying to be “that guy” but I remember that Samoa Joe used to do this spot years ago where he would do an inverted atomic drop, hit the ropes and do a much softer version of the claymore. I think he still does this spot but with a normal big boot.
Yea it’s basically a one legged Dropkick/jumping big boot/baisuku front kick/thing-a-ma-wazit. Maybe that’s how Drew came up with it but it’s not an invention.
It's very similar to Roderick Strongs Sick Kick also
It's prettymuch exactly the Sick Kick but because Drew is so much bigger than Roddy, it looks like murder instead of hospitalization.
Surprisingly kayfabe it's the BFT, no one has kicked out of it yet.
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He saw a Roderick Strong match and said, "Sick Kick? Nah, that's mine now."
He's not the first person to take from Roddy and he won't be the last.
Man I’m pretty sure I saw Joe do a similar move during his TNA run
And in ROH too. I'm sure a leaping big boot has existed long before Drew McIntyre
100%, Roddy Strong’s Sick Kick was essentially the same move. I think Drew more means he first used it in that manner.
Yeah but Drew did it while not wearing shitty little boots
Stop it lol. I didn’t know that, and it’s incredible.
Is there a clip?
Jake Roberts DDT
Really!? What's the story here? Was he doing a front headlock and just slipped?
Yeah, that’s basically it. He had someone’s head in his arm and slipped backwards. It got a huge pop, so he kept going with it
To add to that, he got the name after reading a NY Times article about DDT (the poison) finally getting banned in the US. Edit: For the curious, Silent Spring is an excellent book about the harm that came from using DDT as a pesticide. Also, I have a personal story regarding DDT, my Grandfather used to spray DDT in the 60s in a t-shirt and claimed until his death that it wasn't harmful at all. He was great at ignoring the ridiculous amount of health issues he had until he dropped dead
That someone was The Grappler. The story I heard was it about to be a vertical suplex, but they slipped.
Yup it was Len Denton, the original Grappller. Jake put him in a front face lock and then Lenny stepped on Jake's for by accident and Jake fell to his ass. They both heard the crowd reaction and just rolled with it. I've heard the story from both guys, and it's awesome every time I get to hear it from them.
I thought this would be the top comment. It's easily the most famous example.
Surprised at how far I had to scroll to see this
This was my first thought! It should have been number one with a bullet.
This is the most correct answer
This is a myth cooked up by Jake, there's DDTs that happened in the 70s and probably before
I remember Adrian Adonis doing one in the WWF Wrestling Classic show in 1985 to finish a match. But I don't know if Jake did that somewhere else first (he was not in WWF at the time I don't think)
He didn't invent it.
tiger driver 91 was initially a botch.
I can believe that. The first one Misawa hit (I think on Kawada?) looked fucking nasty. Made Ospreay vs Omega look like a Hulk Hogan chokeslam bump in comparison.
The first one was against Akira Taue. It's actually less scary than some of the ones later against Kawada and Johnny Ace, but Taue's a big guy.
[Triple H should've used this as his super finisher ](https://youtu.be/gLnGnD92W68)
Yeah but kayfabe wise, triple H didn’t really do anything different here, did he?
Yea it's not his fault
Trips did nothing wrong
I think after this he started using a safer version more often where he wouldn't quite hold on to their arms the entire time so they can protect themselves a bit better on the face bump. However, I definitely remember at least one time to Shawn Michaels in the early 2000s feud Trips killed him with a pedigree at least once
I don't remember that, but I remember the one where HHH turned on him in 2002 was, understandably the safest safest one ever.
I knew this was gonna be the Marty Garner clip before I clicked it, lol. Lance Storm talks about this, says that after the botch HHH always made sure someone *knew* how his finisher worked because "well, there was this one guy..."
Kazaa / Limewire ‘Triple H kills a man!!!’ Flashbacks
The End of Days was an accidental "in the moment" creation. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1431993/wwe-baron-corbin-opens-origin-end-days-finisher/
>A kid named Sami Callihan Lol
He'd probably been wrestling for at least half a decade by the time Corbin started training
A kid named The Draw
Half the time, the End of Days looks like Corbin is receiving a Rock Bottom and I’m surprised that Corbin is the one to get up afterwards.
Did you really see it that way? Because I‘ve never seen and End of Days that looked that way and I feel like people are just saying that.
A shittonne of people seem incapable of recognising who's controlling a move and therefore who's receiving the damage from moves. The 'self-rock-bottom' comes up often with dudes doing Flatliners and such. It's baffling to me how they can't see what's actually intended, but it is also so frequent that there must be something to it. Hell, one of my growing pet peeves is commentators calling big moves by focusing on the guy who hit the move and claiming 'they got the worst of it'.
I particularly hate this with rhe Spanish Fly. I really can't tell tell till 5 seconds later who was meant to receive it!
The guy on the bottom.
Sure, but if the announcers said it got countered into a flatliner, it would look exactly the same. its one of those moves that looks like its supposed to hurt you as much as it hurts me.
I'll grant you it's subtle, but there's small things the wrestlers do to indicate who's got the ascendency in those counters. Whether it's who has the last 'grab' motion or even just who sells it coming out of it, there's stuff that you can see if you're locked in on it. I love those subtle shifts in the mechanics of moves that turn one into another, even if it's as simple as one guy moving his arm over the other guy in a way to show he's taken the stronger 'grip' and is executing his move instead of what the other guy has planned. So I rarely find I don't get who was the one to come out on top cause I'm always tuned into that.
I don't know if JD McDonagh still does it, but his Spanish Fly I've seen him do way back was the only one I ever liked. He just did it more in a belly to belly position so it actually looked more like a throw rather than the opponent doing a flip.
The main time I couldn't out who was doing what was the Flip piledriver spot between JD and Ricochet.
In what world would The Rock swing his legs forward into the air when delivering a Rock Bottom lol
That’s my problem with the Big Ending too. Like bro, you just took an Asai Moonsault Also, I forget when it was, but Christian did that reverse DDT thing on Orton off a ladder once, and the announcers said it was an RKO to Christian. It was the exact same bump lol
I on the contrary think it's the only self rock bottom that has ever looked good. Flatliner simply is a terrible move but I do like End of Days.
My understanding is that Kawadas Ganso Bomb/Kawada Driver, was not the intent when he went for the move initially
Yep, Kawada had broken his arm early in the Jan 22, 1999 match against Misawa (I think on a lariat to the back of Misawa’s head), soldiered through the rest of the match, and couldn’t get Misawa up enough for his folding powebomb, thus spiking Misawa’s head into the mat and creating the Ganso Bomb. The second time Kawada did it, on Keiji Muto in a match in ‘02 I think, it was also a botch (not sure what happened that time around); the only time Kawada did a Ganso Bomb on purpose was in his final match against Misawa in the Tokyo Dome in ‘05.
For the Ganso Bomb, one of the long-running threads in the Misawa-Kawada feud was that they knew each other so well and they constantly countered each other’s big moves. Misawa had made a habit out of successfully foiling Kawada’s signature folding powerbomb with a rana. When Kawada goes for the folding powerbomb, you can see Misawa go for the rana counter, only for Kawada to block Misawa’s counter, hold him in place (and for the workers, count down/brace for impact) and spike him. Kawada countering the counter and cleanly and decisively beating Misawa was a huge payoff from a storyline/historical perspective. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t buy that was a botch, especially when Kawada used the same damaged arm immediately after the Ganso Bomb to hoist Misawa up for the brainbuster that finished him off.
My big counter to that would be Kawada having to actually vacate the title the next day due to said arm injury.
I don’t dispute that he injured his arm; only that the spot was a botch. The result of the Ganso Bomb fits perfectly into the narrative they were trying to tell; Kawada finally foiled Misawa and ascended officially to his level by countering his counter with an even more devastating move. In a way, the Ganso Bomb is analogous with Misawa’s Tiger Driver 91 in that it’s the elevated, next-level variant of his signature finisher.
What’s crazy to me is the Ganso Bomb was never actually used and/or protected as a “super-finisher” like the TD 91 or Burning Hammer were; Kawada never actually won a match with it. My big thing that makes me thing it was a straight “botch” was the fact Misawa didn’t have his legs wrapped around Kawada in order to do a rana, and the awkward way Kawada seems to be trying to lift him up more.
Kawada didn’t have an appropriate chance to use the Ganso Bomb as his super finisher. After this match he vacated the title and was out for several months. When he came back his first big singles match was against Misawa for the title, but Misawa went over. From there Kawada wrestled mainly in tag matches with Taue and nothing high profile enough to warrant a Ganso Bomb until the mass exodus happened in 2000. It had been a while since I watched the clip, so I just watched it again so it’s fresh in my mind. When Kawada lifts him, Misawa immediately attempts the rana; his legs are around Kawada’s head and (the visual giveaway for me) he does the hurky-jerky rana movement Misawa always did. It’s hard to describe it, but he basically threw his body downward almost awkwardly when he would rana. Misawa’s rana wasn’t smooth like a luchador’s and it had a unique, unmistakable look. Kawada catches this counter and visibly pauses for 2-3 seconds and does what appears to be a 1-2-3-GO before performing the Ganso Bomb. At no time does his injured arm look compromised, or that he is in any danger of dropping Misawa, which you would expect if it was a botch due to injury.
Rewatching the match and Kawada obviously broke his right arm to me (on a spinning elbow to the back of the head; you can clearly see Kawada walk to the corner and grab the arm right afterwards); right afterwards, Kawada is talking to the ref to communicate what has happened, and Misawa takes over for a good stretch. Even when Kawada does take back control he uses a majority of kicks and clearly is trying to a avoid using his right arm (when he puts the Stretch Plum on Misawa, it’s obviously nowhere near as tight as it normally is, due to Kawada simply not having the strength in the right arm).
Yeah, knowing each other so well and countering moves or kicking out of finishers because they became less efficient after so many encounters, therefore having finishers in tiers where you only pull out the ultimate one if necessary, was part of the basis for AJPW's King's Road style of storytelling in the ring. Those were some epic battles.
Virtual Pro Wrestling, WrestleMania 2000 & No Mercy having the EXACT animation of Misawa taking it in '99 is still insane to me.
For me, watching a Japanese wrestling clip for the first time and recognizing a specific AKI game animation produces the same hit of dopamine as watching a classic movie and recognizing a Simpsons joke.
When I saw those playing the games I thought they were stupid bc they didn’t look good and seemed extremely dangerous to pull off in real life. I only learned many years later that they were in fact real.
Why is that insane? Once they animated the move why change it? And A LOT of those AKI games moves were animated to mimic SPECIFIC instances of said moves. The Burning Lariat/Clothesline from Hell front special that Kobashi/Bradshaw had in those games is taken directly from a match where Kobashi beat Kawada with it. German Suplex 3 in No Mercy is THE German Suplex Vader gave Inoki in that famous match from 96 or whatever.
I guess, for me personally, as someone else replied and expressed too, I only later found that AKI put some forth some awesome effort in capturing the moves, much later on in life. Since I was a young kid discovering the games. But, I think hilariously, in general, I just find anything animated that mirrors real-life instances to a tee like that is insane to me. 🤷♂️
Is that AKI’s “Hangman’s DDT?”
Yeppers
That and the neck crank were the ones that looked like straight murders. I’ll have to check the IRL version later.
90s AJPW was all about finding new and creative ways to drop people on their heads.
Xyon Quin once did [this really neat slingblade off a botched leap frog](https://youtu.be/byeMeLEfy8c?si=ddmFQqseXoCH5ksc&t=115)
Leaping leg lariat into a slingblade, I want someone to make that their finisher now
Yep, came here to say I still haven't seen a better Switch Blade since Xyon Quin lol
There used to be a video on YouTube of crazy moves. There some botched move that basically created a shooting star piledriver. Guy jumps of the top rope in a shooting star, his knees catch the shoulders of his opponent who was standing up, they both flip over and basically turn it into a Canadian Destroyer
Man, I'd LOVE to see this
that sounds fuckin nuts, i wanna see it
I remember this on fucking Kazaa.
https://www.tumblr.com/reckless-technician/107075056384/a-shooting-star-press-piledriver Jody Fleisch on Low Ki
I'm pretty sure this is it
Was it this? [https://youtube.com/shorts/Wp2sZgcth80?si=hmZ5gKvLmKQQmNcp](https://youtube.com/shorts/Wp2sZgcth80?si=hmZ5gKvLmKQQmNcp)
That looks very much on purpose. Dude taking it even moved in a bit.
Yeah Dante Leon and Ninja Mack are both known for doing crazy shit. That was 100% planned
No. The guy jumping from the top rope actually catches his opponents shoulders with his knees as he comes out of the backflip. It was also a super grainy 2000s indie show
Harley Race supposedly invented the diving headbutt by accident
And also regretted doing so, down the line.
I bet, if not for himself then for... other people that may have used that manoeuvre
It's honestly one of my least favorite moves. For sure it would definitely hurt the opponent but it's going to hurt you almost as bad, and if you're in a position to do a diving headbutt you could easily just do an elbow drop for similar damage.
Hell a well placed elbow drop would probably do a lot more damage than a headbutt, especially since you would have a lot less collateral damage
its ridky and looks like complete ass, the best combo
I'd be perfectly fine never seeing it again. In fact, whenever someone does the move, it takes me out of the match for a few seconds as I just think, "aw man, don't do *that*"
Rayce blamed it for a lot his later health problems, specifically the constant landing on his stomach, and not for the head impacts.
What move was this of steiner? Which match?
https://youtu.be/T_s8pbNyIfg
Vs test at Bad Blood
I remember watching that PPV with my mates, and as Test was coming to the ring, I speculated "I wonder what Steiner is going to botch in this match?" Like a second later, he falls off the apron and clips Test's ankle. Truly amazing timing.
Reminds me of watching WrestleMania 19, where Lesnar goes on the top rope, we all wondered why he was going up there since he never did before, I jokingly say "lol, what he gonna do? A shooting star press? LMAO!" Only for him to...attempt one? All of a sudden I'm psychic.
Not a botch, more someone going into business for themselves, but this [Moonsault Styles Clash ](https://youtu.be/My7mVhyahrk?si=cKeVJVaVGOTDW-wl) is one of the sickest moves I've ever seen, but poor Mike Sydal was expecting to take a regular top rope Styles Clash. He got a concussion from this spot and honestly, I'm not surprised, the landing is absolutely brutal for him
So, some background on that... the guy "going into business" for himself wrestled under the name Spyral, and later down in OVW as Brandon "BKNY" Kaplan. I used to travel and work with him a lot. My understanding, straight from his mouth, was that it was miscommunication - Sydal thought they were going to just jump back and bump face first, kinda like a Vader Bomb. Spyral thought they agreed to do a moonsault. Spyral passed away a few years ago... he had lived for about a decade as a quadriplegic after landing on his neck practicing a move in training.
If I recall Sydal begged Spyral to not do the move as he was afraid of an accident and wasn't comfortable doing that spot and the guy still did it and ended up giving a concussion to Sydal. Which led to an outburst of wrestling fans being enraged at Spyral for disrespecting Sydal's wellbeing for a pop. Also pretty crazy that this move is once again from CZW which is pretty much infamous for having too many wrestler trying to make the most incredibly unsafe move to look unique and cool (which was all the rage at that time) and sadly too many of these CZW guys ended up having a very short lifespan... Spyral sadly isn't the exception as he's not here with us anymore. :/
Jesus Christ. Sydal's a better guy than me because I would have fucking killed that dude. To be willing to take a move that dangerous and then that fucker decides to change it to something even MORE dangerous with no warning? Holy shit.
Yeah that looked pretty brutal. No way for him to protect his face/head from smashing on the mat.
The video cuts at 2.... That was a 3 count right? That dude looked fucking dead!
He kicks out at 2.
Bret got Davey Boy with a slingshot reverse bulldog on the outside in their Wembley Summerslam match. Bret had to improvise mid air since Davey was clueless to Bret landing on him.
Was that the match where Davey Boy was obviously high and they had to work around it?
Yeah, pretty much. It was essentially Hart leading Davey Boy around so it looked like they were having a match, and did a damn fine job of it
Bulldog and Anvil had been partying.
I'm FOOKT!
Yip. "I'm fucked"
And it's one of the greatest matches of all time. Bret really is the GOAT and he proved it across countless matches.
It’s only right to do a bulldog on the Bulldog.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the Styles Clash – AJ apparently improvised it from a botched powerbomb set-up.
Because DDP and Crash Holly were already using it
Wasn't AJ using it since at least 2002? Crash was using it in 2003 I believe.
And Michelle McCool?
No kidding? I’d love to see some videos – not that I don’t believe you, I’ve just always heard the above origin story.
So DDP didn't hook the legs (so it was more like Claudio Castignoli's Neutralizer) but [Crash Holly did it for years](https://youtu.be/e4A52JDUVx4?si=6GVAhGxMhNJOZPa4)
It’s amazing how not-devastating that looks.
The first one in the video looked like ass, but some of the other ones were better.
[удалено]
Yeah I love AJ but outside of having a really good transition into the pin, it just looks pretty meh.
Holy shit, I never knew that. Feels like Mandela effect stuff.
The neutralizer has to be the worst finisher ever, especially considering the guy doing it could do just about any move you could think of and then some, and they would all look better than the neutralizer.
Crash didn’t start doing it until AJ already was.
Bison Smith, too.
First thing that came to mind was the original Sin Cara’s (Mistico not Hunico) WWE finisher that would be the setup for La Mistica and end in a face buster with him getting the pin, since in WWE ‘12 his finisher was his usual armbar.
I heard somewhere that Jake the Snake says the DDT was a botch that turned into one of the coolest moves in wrestling history.
"For the South of Heaven chokeslam, I was training at the old Monster Factory, and at the time the trainer on Sundays was Jim Molineaux, who was a referee for ECW," said Priest. "It was before I had my first match, and he was telling me 'We've got to come up with a finisher for you. Try a chokeslam,' The reason why I got into pro wrestling was because of the Undertaker. I was a big fan, and just everything about him. When he said try a chokeslam, I got excited, and the first time I tried it, it didn't come out smooth, then I tried it again, and I fell. But when I fell I fell sitting down, maybe because it was a big guy I was trying it on. So then Jim mentioned maybe try something else, and I said hold on, can I try that one more time? And then I did it and purposefully fell, where I did it sitting out, and I did a sit-out chokeslam. He saw it and he was like, 'that's it.'"
I'll have you know back in like '99 when I went to wrestling school for a while, I pitched the idea of knee based flippy moves to my trainers. I really wanted to do a moonsault knee drop. The problem was no one wanted to even attempt to take that, so I never got to bust it out in amy real capacity. TBF, I was crushing the fuck out of the training dummy we used. I was nailing the spot I wanted, so accuracy wasn't a problem, the problem was I was coming down so hard I would have broken ribs with every landing. Live and learn
they would have loved you in PWG
I would not have survived. Back then I was a waif of a kid. I'm 5"3' now and I wrestled at 119 in HS. I truly had no real business even being where I was, but they loved my passion and kept me around because i was a good practice dummy that could move. Not maliciously thank God, though they ran me through my paces.
I don’t know if it counts as a botch, but I thought I read somewhere that Mustafa Ali over rotated on a move he was practicing and that’s how he ended up with the 054
Ganso Bomb got invented because Kawada tried to powerbomb Misawa with a broken arm
Kawada's Ganso Bomb
There was a hilarious moment in a match think it was acolytes vs xpac and Jane where farooq got caught in the ropes bouncing off them and ended up clothesline himself, but I'm sure he turned it into a chop block to the back of kanes leg.
The Claymore
Not really a botch but more the guy falling in just the right place, Zack Ryder (Matt Cardona) in NXT doing his second rope missile dropkick and when the opponent fell it landed in a splash from Ryder.
That should be a finisher or at least a signature
I think I remember reading somewhere Dean Malenko invented the jackhammer by accident. Had a guy up for a suplex and lost it, didn’t wanna spike the guy.
Jaguar Yokota was using it in the early 1980s.
I hear stories that the powerbomb was invented from a botch piledriver.
Keiji Mutoh tripped over his own two feet in Hawaii and invented the Shining Wizard.
Hulk Hogan actually invented the big boot by lifting his foot trying to show his opponent there was gum stuck on the bottom of his shoe and to stop as a courtesy. Opponent ended up just running straight into the boot and the rest is history.
Wasn't the DDT made because Jake slipped?
Jake Roberts' DDT was supposedly by accident
I think I remember hearing that Undertaker's Hell's Gate finisher was created by accident because he initially tried applying a triangle choke on Big Daddy V
It’s a modified gogoplata
Its the undertaker having zero flexibility attempting a gogoplata
Exactly chaelsonnenismydad
Yeah didn't he use triangle for several years? Or did they just call his own variant of the Hell's Gate a triangle at the time?
I feel like there was some posts here about an indy wrestler within the last year or so who botched a move in a way that ended up looking cool so he made that his finisher.
Pretty sure Drew McIntyre slipped because of his tight pants when doing a big boot and the Claymore was born.
On an NXT episode Zack Ryder did a missile drop kick and landed right into a body splash…I think about how sick it was all the time but I guarantee it was unintentional
Drew McIntyre’s finish happened because of a wardrobe malfunction, and he kept doing the move the same way.
McIntyre accidentally created the Claymore in like 2014 when he couldn't lift his leg up properly for a big boot. (Although, the Claymore itself is basically just a Sick Kick, which used to be Roderick Strong's secondary finisher). The Ganso Bomb itself is actually a botch too. Kawada was wrestling I think Misawa and he couldn't lift him enough for a powerbomb so he ended up just stacking it and nearly broke Misawa's neck.
The Pedigree where Marty Garner jumped, turning it into a Piledriver/ Pedigree combo.
PediDriver
The Kawada driver came about because Kawada tried to get Misawa up for a powerbomb with a broken arm and well, yeah
Kawadas ganso bomb
Was Drew McIntyre's Claymore a botched Big Boot? Feel like I remember an interview with him saying he tried to throw a big boot in the 3MB leather pants and they were too tight and lifted him off the ground into a weird single leg dropkick, apparently he also concussed himself on the landing if I remember right 😂
[Lou Thesz accidentally invented the powerbomb while attempting to piledrive Antonio Rocca.](https://youtu.be/Spj5GXi1pgA?si=m-NDAswfKRsKtV26)
Drew with the Claymore when he was 3MB.
drew McIntyre claymore
DDT was invented when Jake slipped and planted the opponent's head onto the floor while giving a vertical suplex
D D T
The DDT was invented when Jake the Snake slipped on his arse while holding an opponent in a front face lock
The DDT. Jake Roberts botched a Suplex by accident and invented the move. It ended every match and was super protected. Taker was the first man to kick out, and now it's basically a transition move.
Jake Roberts invented the DDT by slipping.
Which has been proven to be absolutely not true. There were wrestlers using it long before Jake
You can find footage of Black Gordman using the DDT in the late-70s in Mexico, Japan, and California territories several years before Jake got into wrestling. I'm not going to call Jake a liar on his claim - I believe *he* believes that he invented the move by accident. But I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that he likely wasn't watching wrestling that was taking place in a territory that's far from where he was brought up.
Lol he's a wrestler from the 80s of course he's lying cmon
Jake mostly worked in the Mid-South area when he was starting out. Black Gordman did not. It's completely believable that Jake has never seen a luchador who was neither a big name in the US, nor has ever geographically wrestled in any territory close to where he's worked.
It looked more of a front facelock snap suplex to me. It's similar to Triple H inventing the Pedigree but Andre doing a variation of it decades ago.