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You know a better way
to beat up a shark?
Ever noticed that professional wrestling moves pop-up in the strangest places?
Usually prevalent in videogames, especially beat-em-ups. In your average beat-em-up, throws are compulsory, yet most real martial arts have throws that are quite... well, boring. And some martial arts don't have throws at all. So where can the designers find throws that are more interesting? Good ole wrasslin'. A nice solid suplex or perfectly executed arm bar can help convey untold amounts of badassness to a character as the viewer watches them delivering maximum ouch factor. Also might be explained by the Japanese love of pro-wrestling.
In general, if a character in a Fighting Game specializes in grapples, most of them will be of this variety.
Of course, in Real Life, such crazy throws usually require the opponent to at least allow it to happen, and most of them require the person being thrown, suplexed etc. to actually assist in the attempt (not all, but most). This means that these moves would be very easily countered by a resisting target, and would thus be pointless to use in a real combat situation. However, one of the most commonly seen moves, the German Suplex, can be delivered to a struggling/actively resisting opponent (as its simplest form is just grappling and falling backwards), but it is never as clean as TV would have you believe, although some professional wrestlers have demonstrated the strength to perform a "deadlift" (unassisted) German suplex.
May be part of a Meteor Move. See also Suplex Finisher and Spinning Piledriver. Contrast Just Hit Him, where throws are inexplicably ineffective.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
Comics
- Riley Freeman is a fan of chucking folding chairs at people, the way Sabu does.
Collectible Card Game
Film
Literature
- Mike Fink in the fifth Bloody Jack novel, Mississippi Jack.
Music Video
- In the Snoop Dogg video Knocc Down, one of the fighters delivers a rather nasty swinging neckbreaker on his opponent.
Live Action TV
- The Rival in Kamen Rider Den-O, Yuuto Sakurai, has plenty of wrestling moves in his repertoire when fighting as Kamen Rider Zeronos. This is Handwaved by the fact that he's a mark for wrestling.
- Monica Dawson from Heroes does a pretty wicked Tiger Feint kick (the 619, for Mysterio fans out there) to foil what would've been a robbery.
- Her power is adoptive muscle memory, allowing her to replicate any physical motion she witnesses without having to practice it. She had watched Wrestlemania 22 (specifically the Rey Mysterio/Randy Orton/Kurt Angle match for the World Heavy Weight Championship) only minutes before the robbery on a nearby TV.
- Hilariously subverted on Chuck. One episode had Stone Cold Steve Austin guest-starring as an enemy spy, who is mentioned to be a specialist in "close quarters combat". Later in the episode, it turns out that he's an expert swordsman.
- The aforementioned Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson demonstrated a Rock Bottom on Seven-Of-Nine when he guest-starred in the Star Trek: Voyager episode entitled "Tsunkatse".
- Captain Kirk's distinctive fighting style includes a fair number of pro-wrestling moves.
- The Vulcan nerve-pinch is basically a claw hold.
- Two Phantom Zone escapees in Smallville, Aldar and Titan specialize in these. Then again, they are played by Batista and Kane respectively.
- Big Wolf on Campus: EVERYBODY fought with pro wrestling moves. Heck, when fighting in groups, the good guys and bad guys would tag themselves in.
- The main character of Angel likes professional wrestling moves. They usually have the crippling affect they would have when one isn't concerned about the other guy's safety. Even when all but his earliest memories are erased he still uses wrestling moves, even admitting he doesn't know anything about real fighting at this point! Professional Wrestling is older than many think but since he grew up in the 1700s, it must be much Older Than They Think in his universe.
- Maybe the above carried over to Buffy as an early Season 5 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows her performing a hurricanranna onto a vampire.
- During an Imagine Spot in episode 10 of Gekisou Sentai Carranger, Natsumi (Yellow Racer) has Naoki (Blue Racer) in an Elevated Boston Crab
 ◊, aka Walls of Jericho.
- It's also quite common for Sentai warriors to whip out a wrestling move in battles against Mooks, even if they're not wrestlers (excepting Domon/Time Yellow, who used to be a wrestler thus some 'bear hugs' are excusable). Kijima Futoshi/Goggle Yellow once used an Atomic Drop.
- Don Dogoier of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger fame uses these a lot, in episode 13 and 43 he uses a Figure-Four Leg-Lock *
the enemy taps out. and a Hurricanranna respectively.
- Iwasaki Ryuji of Tokumei Sentai Go Busters once used a German Suplex to take down an enemy Megaroid.
- And also deployed a cross armbreaker on Copyroid to disable its camera arm (and its copying abilities).
- In Spartacus Blood And Sand, gladiators will occasionally bust out wrestling moves if forced to fight unarmed.
Tabletop Games
- In just about every edition of Champions, the generic superhero martial arts skill includes a Throw maneuver.
- Averted in GURPS, Professional Wrestling uses the Wrestling Art skill, which is not very effective for combat.
- Deadlands contains a ton of "fightin' maneuvers" in its extended rulebooks. Several of them are based off of pro wrestling, including a piledriver and the freaking Stone Cold Stunner.
- A Brawler-build fighter in the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons can and often will be played like this.
Video Games
- Tekken has King and Armor King, who are wrestlers. But that doesn't explain Heihachi Mishima (a karate master) busting out powerbombs, or kickboxer Bryan Fury's tornado DDT, or even (Kenpo and Xing Yi practitioners) Michelle and Julia Chang's range of suplexes... the reason? Wrestling moves are cool!
- In Tekken: Blood Vengeance, Heihachi takes it up a notch by adding a German Suplex to his movelist, as Jin Kazama can bear witness.
- Jun Kazama's a mixed martial artist, we can accept that. Her moves stem from akido, judo, and karate, we can accept that. So why, as someone with perhaps the least interest in pro wrestling, is she busting out pro wrestling moves?
- Resident Evil 4: Leon's ability to shoot an enemy in the knee, then run up to them and perform a Northern Lights Suplex on them is great. In fact many players used little else while fighting enemies that could be dispatched in this way. (Suplexing enemies also tends to stop plagas from spawning).
- Through a glitch on the Gamecube version, even Ashley can suplex enemies.
- In RE5, Sheva and Jill are either wrestling fans or they were trained by Cammy. Both use the hurricarana leg scissors, though only Sheva does it properly. Jill performs it ala Shawn Michaels.
- Street Fighter: Played straight with Zangief and Darun Mister, both of whom are celebrated wrestlers in canon, and both 360' grapples do a massive chunk of damage to your life points.
- R. Mika from the Alpha games has moves typical of a Japanese female pro wrestler and an extremely fanciful costume◊ not different from the likes of Mima Shimoda◊ and Manami Toyota◊.
- Cammy also used an aforementioned Hurricanrana, and a German Suplex as her throws in most of her appearances in Street Fighter.
- Her Street Fighter IV Ultra Cammy Quick Combination basically ends a series of grabs with a crotch face smother. If you're facing her, I can't think of a better way to lose a match.
- ...and then she twists your head and you hear your neck snap.
- And of course, Mike Haggar from Final Fight and later Saturday Night Slam Masters, where he's an actual wrestler.
- Street Fighter III brings us Alex and Hugo, the latter being (alongside his base character, the Andore family from Final Fight) based off of wrestling legend André the Giant. EVERY MOVE. And yes, Andre used to throw Drop Kicks in his more agile days.
- Abigail from Final Fight as well.
- Guile and Charlie do that devastating mid-air Backbreaker throw, and their grab move is a German Suplex
- Vega/Balrog does the Izuna Drop and the Super Rolling Izuna Drop.
- Street Fighter IV brings us El Fuerte, a Mexican luchador. Clearly from the tecnico side of the fence, he fights with fancy throws and agile movements not unlike Rey Mysterio.
- There are various iterations of Chun-Li with a side slam (i.e. rock bottom) as her grab move.
- World Heroes: Muscle Power. Lots of super powerful grapples, plus clotheslines and drop kicks to get in to grabbing range
- Mortal Kombat has Jax's signature Backbreaker, and Sonya's leg slam.
- Oh, and Kitana and Mileena pulling off German suplexes in the second game. Jade later does this, but with her staff in Ultimate and Trilogy.
- The Catsaber of the Disgaea series has its "Bell Volcano" special, which is a combo of wrestling moves that includes a suplex, piledriver, and backbreaker.
- Final Fantasy VIII: Sometimes, in the overworld, you'll meet a Wendigo, who'll quite happily powerbomb your characters, given the chance. He also uses back drops and clotheslines.
- Final Fantasy VI takes the gold for most absurd example, however. Sabin Rene Figaro uses a peculiar mixture of karate and pro-wrestling moves, which allows him to (among other things) SUPLEX AN ENTIRE TRAIN WHILE IT'S ROLLING AT FULL STEAM.
- Final Fantasy VII's Tifa's Limit Breaks include giving the enemy a Brainbuster. Her Limit Break attacks even lets her do a piledriver attack on a giant evil wall. It's every bit as awesome as it sounds.
- Chrono Cross had a boss whose moves were all given professional wrestling names. With no attention to what the moves actually were. His move "powerbomb", for example, is more of a frog splash that hits the entire party.
- It also has Greco, an ex-pro wrestling priest based off of the real life Fray Tormenta.
- In Batman Arkham City Batman will occasionally DDT his opponents when performing a noisy Takedown, and one of his double counters is a northern lights suplex. He also uses the ankle lock as a Special Combo Takedown. Other characters use wresting moves quite liberally as well, such as frankensteiners and off-the-railing elbow drops.
- The second Shadow Hearts game featured a pro-wrestling superhero vampire! He even receives training from legendary real-life wrestler the Great Gama, although the real Gama didn't indulge in so much Ho Yay.
- In NFL Blitz, oftentimes after the whistle you can see players doing Hulk Hogan-style leg drops and German suplexes on other players.
- In Blitz: The League (after Midway lost the NFL license), there will rarely be a play where someone isn't being back body dropped, German suplexed, belly to back suplexed, hip tossed, or just plain suplexed.
- Gene from God Hand busts out a suplex or two here and there (which can be escaped in rapid succession by both Gene and the enemy, leading them quickly swapping places repeatedly until one of them gets suplexed), though considering the ridiculous breadth of fighting styles (drunken boxing!) and special moves (celestial baseball bat!) available to him, it's not that out of place.
- Axel, Blaze, and Adam from Streets of Rage list their fighting styles as kickboxing, martial arts, and judo yet their rear throws consist of German suplexes and overhead belly-to-belly suplexes. Max from Streets of Rage II is an actual wrestler, so his use of the German suplex makes a modicum of sense. And since he's twice as big as most of the bog-standard enemies, any question of them resisting is rendered moot...
- By III, Axel has more or less completely transformed into a full grappler
- Kirby games with Bugzzy in them. If Bugzzy is absorbed then all of Kirby's moves become wrestling slams. These are the basis for Kirby's throws in the Super Smash Brothers games, though one is replaced by Ninja Kirby's Spinning Piledriver.
- Soul Calibur features Astaroth, who hits a mean giant-axe-assisted powerbomb, and Nightmare, who can hit a dropkick, despite wearing a full suit of armour.
- One of Nightmare's side-throws is an Inverted DDT, albeit one accomplished by a huge leap into the air.
- Taki's back throw is a modified Inverted Death Valley Driver, with her lifting the victim up slightly above her shoulders before dropping him down on his head.
- Some of the unarmed finishers in Skyrim include a chokeslam, a powerbomb, and a suplex.
- It pretty much goes without saying that Travis Touchdown would not only use a Beam katana but also wrestling maneuvers in No More Heroes. And by finding wrestling masks lying around, he learns new ones. Travis is a pro wrestling fan, and noted to be an old pro wrestler himself, as the masks have letters that help him remember various moves from his days of wrestling in Calgary (apparently). He also buys videotapes of famous matches (obsessively watching cool things on tape is pretty much how Travis learned to do everything cool to begin with) that he learns new moves from (incidentally, said letters are signed MS...)
- Half of solo developer M Dickie's games are professional wrestling sims, and half are novel genre excursions - a time traveling military game, for example, or a convict simulator, or an ancient Judaean meditation rpg. But to save time and money, Dickie builds them all on top of the same wrestling simulator engine. The result is prisoners performing wrassling throws on one another, or your avatar accidentally smashing Jesus over the head with a plank of wood when you're just trying to give him a hug.
- Several characters, such as Sarah, Jacky, and Jeffry, of Virtua Fighter play this trope completely straight.
- Inverted with Wolf Hawkfield and El Blaze: in addition to wrestling and lucha libre throws, respectively, they have a fair amount of martial arts and boxing in their movelists.
- In Lego Indiana Jones, the title character can hit back body drops, dropkicks, and sweep the leg during attack combos, and even can lock the "enemies" in a full nelson before throwing them aside.
- In Lego Batman, Bane and Killer Croc both have military presses as their grapple positions, and Croc can drop his into a sitout Tombstone Piledriver.
- Frank West from Dead Rising uses wrestling moves on zombies. Surprisingly effective when cornered and you've got nothing else to use as a weapon.
- He's covered wrestling matches, y'know.
- Ryu Hayabusa from the Xbox remake series of Ninja Gaiden can pull off a Guillotine Throw, which is basically an air-to-ground "judo" throw. He also has the Izuna Drop spinning piledriver, which when used at the end of an air combo is a certain kill against launchable enemies even on the highest of the Harder Than Hard difficulties. These moves have reappeared in his Dead or Alive appearances.
- The piledriver also appeared as a counterattack in Ōkami.
- Nero from Devil May Cry 4 pays Homage to Zangief with his Devil Triggered Buster against the Alto Angelos.
- In Mole Mania, you play as a mole, who, among other things, can perform suplexes, not on his enemies, but on steel balls, cabbages, and barrels. Crazy? Yes. Crazy Awesome? HELL YES!
- In GHOST Squad, at one point after passing a hand-to-hand combat test you perform a suplex on a terrorist, after punching him in the crotch. You also high-five the President in this game.
- All of Kira's specials in Arcana Heart employ various Wrestling moves like piledrivers and backbreakers. Maybe the kid watches Pro-Wrestling when she's not working on a project or trying to Take Over the World?
- Konoha also joins the list of Ninja who use the Izuna Drop piledriver.
- Mask de Smith in killer7 was a luchadore before becoming an assassin, and still breaks out wrestling moves on occasion. In one scene, he does a suplex to a pile of rubble and even has the ability to headbutt a bullet all in the same cutscene!
- Jack from MadWorld can performs a jumping back breaker on mook opponents. Using it as a finisher will cause the mook to split vertically in half.
- That's not just a "jumping back breaker", that's the Kinniku Buster.
- In Anarchy Reigns his grapples include a Powerbomb and a German Suplex. Douglas can pull off a Giant Swing on two people at once.
- Alex Mercer of Prototype can pull various wrestling moves including a jumping triple powerbomb off the top of a building, a chokeslam, and running up the side of a building to do a multi-story elbow drop. The Super-Soldier enemy unit also uses wrestling moves including the Alabama Slam and a backbreaker.
- The main character from Saints Row 2 can learn moves like the Death Valley Driver and Rock Bottom during the course of the Brotherhood missions.
- Saints Row The Third looks to continue this tradition with a gang of Mexican wrestlers called the Luchadores. Not to mention one of your revealed homies is an ex-member of this gang. Also, The Boss' melee moves now fit into two categories: over-the-top wrestling moves and Groin Attacks.
- Most of the characters in Urban Reign have signature pro wrestling moves amongst their grappling sets: suplexes, DDT's, facelock jawbreakers, and powerbombs abound. In addition, there are team-up grapples that are obvious tributes to a number of famous tag teams. The Japanese gangsters even get Masahiro Chono style Yakuza Kicks (in fact, two of the gangster mooks are named Masa and Hiro).
- Well, that's because Masahiro Chono does in fact have actual Yakuza connections.
- The player character in Hybrid Heaven can learn a wide variety of attacks, including throws, slams, and clinches— by allowing enemies to perform them on him.
- Even Metal Gear might have gotten in on it; the Close Quarters Combat style created and used by the Boss and Big Boss has been called 'fancy military wrestling'.
- Taken to Crazy Awesome heights in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in the battle between REX and RAY, leading to a Godzilla-esque battle.
- Explained by Otacon how back during REX's development, he and a bunch of the other scientists decided on a whim to add wrestling software into REX's programming. As you could guess, the military didn't approve of this and it was never fully developed, but Otacon installed the software anyways
- The Charger from Left 4 Dead 2 will hit you with a sort of short chokeslam if it catches you. Then it will do it again...and again...and again...
- The Hunter's pounce isn't all that far from a spear tackle. Though professional wrestlers don't often try to tear their opponents flesh off once they have them pinned.
- Ezio of Assassins Creed II apparently invented the chokeslam.
- In Brotherhood, The Executioner kills targets from behind by pulling off a standing version of an Inverted Death Valley Driver/Burning Hammer, while the Blacksmith uses a backbreaker to kill targets facing him.
- In Assassins Creed III, Connor can pull off moves such as a dropkick, a suplex or even a DDT.
- Iron Tager from BlazBlue demonstrates moves of this sort. For example, one of his grabs is undeniably a German Suplex.
- Barkley Shut Up And Jam Gaiden has the party Combat Medic Cyberdwarf doing suplexes and body slams for his basic attacks.
- Bayonetta is shown being able to suplex A TWIN HEADED DRAGON and TEAR ITS HEADS OFF EASILY. We're not kidding. She can. And it's awesome. And even out-rivals Sabin from Final Fantasy VI in absurdity in this regard. And the kicker? She does this when she hasn't even gotten HER FULL POWERS BACK AT ALL!
- She also german suplexes what, 14 angels all at once in the opening movie? Yes, it's as ridiculously over the top as it sounds. It's also par for the course for her.
- In Metal Wolf Chaos, President Michael Wilson finishes off a tank set to destroy the Statue of Liberty by grabbing it from the front and performing a Giant Swing.
- In Spider-Man The Movie: The Video Game, one of the moves you can perform on a Mook is an inverted suplex, that because Peter can do whatever a spider can, Ol' Web-Head will apply the facelock while sitting on the guy's shoulders.
- In Spider-Man 2: The Video Game, Spidey can powerbomb a Mook OFF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.
- In The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess, you can catch charging goats and Gorons by grabbing them and throwing them off to the side. There's also a sumo match minigame, but unfortunately you can only play it once.
- The Rat King in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters has a powerbomb ("Rat Bomber") and a suplex ("Rodent Suplex") in his moveset.
- The little oni Suika of the Touhou series has her "Massacre on Mt. Ooe" super move, where she grabs an opponent and delivers a devastating triple power bomb on her.
- She also has an alternate special move, Kidnapping Oni, where she grabs an opponent and does a single power bomb on her - after pulling her in for the grab with a black hole.
- Tokimeki Memorial has Yumi Saotome, a High School girl who's such a fan of Pro Wrestling, she has developed a personal wrestling move, the "Yumi Bomber", a lariat/grappling-type move. She honed the move on her Butt Monkey brother Yoshio and even on the Main Protagonist in one of the Verse's storylines.
- In Dynasty Warriors 7, Huang Gai's Musou attacks consist of wrestling grapples, including a back drop (misnamed as Piledriver), and a backbreaker (complete with cheering), Deng Ai has an arm bar as one of his Musou and Zhang Fei can pull off a Giant Swing. Anyone who wears a gauntlet (like Ding Feng or Meng Huo) also has a Frankensteiner in addition of a weaker version of the aforementioned Giant Swing.
- In the Conan the Barbarian game for PS3, the Cimmerian can learn grapple attacks such as the Piledriver and the 'Warrior Suplex'.
- Tenchu can get very wrestler-ish in some of the Stealth Kill animations, with Ayame being specially guilty of using overly-complex maneuvers.
- In a more straight example, Tatsumaru was given the Izuna Drop as his strongest special attack in Tenchu 3. Unfortunately, it was removed from his playable form in Co-Op. Not that he needed it, anyway.
- Hoover/Baby Head from Captain Commando can make his Mini Mecha perform piledrivers and drop kicks as part of his arsenal.
- Similarly to the above, Miu's Mini Mecha in Panzer Bandit can pile drive enemies into the ground, strong enough to generate a Shockwave Stomp .
- Kirin in Cannon Dancer can apply a non-spinning Izuna Drop to most human-height enemies in his game, including some bosses.
- Initially averted by Pokémon. Splash was completely useless while submission, take down and body slam was nothing like their professional wrestling counterparts... but then it was played straight in the Mystery Dungeon spinoffs where the splash was properly painful if not avoided.
- Saints Row The Third goes all out on this trope. In addition to various characters, from the Boss to Oleg to Angel, busting out all kinds of wrestling moves multiple taunts the Boss can potentially have are taken from Hulk Hogan (who voices the afforementioned Angel), John Cena and Ric Flair and Killbane himself uses multiple wrestling terms such as "high spot", no surprise since he's an evil Masked Luchador... hell he leads an entire gang of them! Volition seems to have quite a number of wrestling fans on their staff.
- Xenogears: Rico, being a former champ in his own right tends to use a lariat, suplex and powerbomb in his arsenal.
- This shows up in(of all places), Samurai Warriors. Takeda Shingen busts out a giant swing(grabbing the opponent by the legs and spinning rapidly in place). He also has a devastating dropkick that can scatter several enemies. Hojo Ujiyasu has a diving elbow drop. There's probably a few more in there.
- Hawk from Vendetta is an obvious Hulk Hogan clone, so obviously some of his techniques look like wrestling moves.
- Pit-Fighter has ex-professional wrestler Buzz, whose special moves include the body slam and the piledriver.
- Persona 3 and Persona 4 have enemy Hulk Hogan clones whom attack with his lariat finisher in Japan, the Axe Bomber.
- Xenoblade: Melia's Starlight Kick attack is basically Keiji Mutoh/Great Muta's Shining Wizard
- In Project X Zone, Kogoro, along with Mii, finish their Limit Break with this while in mid-air.
Web Original
- Darnell Butler tends to use this in Survival of the Fittest, especially since he is actually a member of the school wrestling team. During version three's Pregame tournament, he defeated one opponent (Paul Smith) with a series of German Suplexes and power bombs, essentially using one of King's chain throws.
- And let's not forget The Riz and Bryan Calvert dropkicking people off a cliff and a hotel block, respectively. This was also done in v1, where terrorist Angelina Kaige killed Lyndi Thibodeaux with a dropkick to the face.
- Occasionally used as food preparation techniques on Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time.
"BODY SLAM THE SAUSAGE!"
- Darwin's Soldiers, Alfred, piledrives a guard during a raid on a Dragonstorm facility. The guard is killed in the process.
Western Animation
- Megas XLR: Coop has a giant robot. He also happens to like pro-wrestling. Put two and two together, well, we have the makings of something completely awesome.
- Wonder Woman used wrestling moves occasionally on Justice League Unlimited. Her best was probably the time she German suplexed Mongul hard enough to leave a crater. Not just Wonder Woman, either. Solomon Grundy gives Superman a standard vertical suplex in "The Terror Beyond". In "The Cat and the Canary" Atomic Skull gives Wildcat a cage assisted back suplex, then upon recovering, Wildcat, a trained boxer and martial artist, responds with a pro-wrestling style clothesline. A few other pro-wrestling moves show up throughout the series as well by various characters.
- In Green Lantern First Flight, Hal Jordan uses his ring to create a folding chair to smack his opponent with.
- In South Park, Eric Cartman has demonstrated ability in sumo and grappling.
- Rath from Ben 10 Alien Force, seen here with such classics as Polaris Pile Driver and Antarian Armbar.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: While fighting Obi-Wan in "Kidnapped", Darts at one point hoists Obi-Wan high over his head and then slams him down onto the floor.
- In Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers Dale puts his evil clone in a Boston crab.
- Kung Fu Panda Legends Of Awesomeness: "Has-been Hero" has both Po and Quan the Unkillable use pro wrestling moves, including a vertical suplex and the Stone Cold Stunner.
- Riley Freeman does a moonsault off a couch in The Boondocks and follows up with a Boston Crab.
Real Life
- Apparently this move (a back suplex) is great against purse snatchers. Don't believe me? How about now?
- How do you stop a receiver who won't go down? Philadelphia's Brian Dawkins' answer was the German Suplex. Most awesome tackle ever.
- Rolando McClain performs a tackle on Rams receiver Danny Amendola that may have made the Rock proud. Granted, unlike Dawkins, McClain got flagged for it. It also got a bit of Lampshade Hanging from the color commentator.
- The sport of Mixed Martial Arts allows a wide range of wrestling moves to be used in actual athletic competition, creating some spectacular matches. This six minute compilation provides a number of examples. In Japan, many pro wrestlers compete in both staged "show wrestling" and legitimate "shoot wrestling" in which they put their skills to work in actual MMA-style fights.
- Of course, part of that is the fact that pro wrestling grew out of amateur wrestling, especially Greco-Roman wrestling. In amateur wrestling, the suplex is pronounced suplay—a nice bonus for anyone who remembers Gordon Solie.
- Let's not forget the infamous effect of a doing piledriver on a little girl as her brother learned the hard way how much damage (read: death) the move can do. This quickly prompted the WWE (WWF at the time) to hammer in the old saying, Don't Try This at Home
- Eventually, the highly dangerous nature of piledrivers would result in the WWE would outright ban any sort of piledriver barring less than a handful of exceptions and only in certain situations.
- Notable aversion: the Tombstone Piledriver (of Undertaker fame) is one of the safest moves in wrestling when properly executed, as the only impact is to the piledrivee's knees, not the piledriven's head (please excuse the awkward nomenclature). Note the distinction of "PROPERLY EXECUTED", young Tropers. Professional wrestlers are just that: professionals. They train for years to do it safely, and look at the list of injuries for any one pro wrestler who's been wrestling for any length of time.
- Although if you look at early-Undertaker and current-Undertaker versions of the Tombstone, you can see there is a noticeable difference in the amount of impact the piledriven wrestler receives. The early ones get a lot more pressure on their head and neck...
- Mick Foley's number one rule in wrestling? Thou shalt not perform moves that can compress the vertebrae. He trusts Taker more than anyone else in the business, yet was legitimately scared every single time he was in the Tombstone. He lists a number of moves (piledrivers, suplexes, brainbusters, DDTs) that are lethal and tells people not to do them.
- Let's not forget that Abraham Lincoln invented the chokeslam.
- Bullying Casey Haynes is a very bad idea.
- In the PokéWalker, if 2 Pokémon have a friendly battle, the journal sometimes mentions that said battle was turned into a wrestling match.
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