The Way I C It 12.10.07: Jericho, Super Dragon, Karl Gotch, Manami Toyota and More

Greetings humanity! Welcome once again to The Way I C It, for your weekly dose of opinion, feedback, summary and, of course, Smooth Moves. I just got done watching my Raptors humble Houston with a stifling defensive display, but we’re not going to talk about those trophy-buying prima donnas at Manchester United.

A couple of weeks back, I referred to Tiger Ali Singh as a Heat Vacuum. I was browsing WrestleCrap the other day, and what should I see? Lo Down being inducted, with their manager, the Human Heat Vacuum. Honest to goodness, I did not know that was there. Enough with the self-appreciation, on to what I C!

The Way I C The E

I loved Kennedy’s promo…right up until the end. Talking to the fake Shawn sounded forced and like he forgot his lines. Like most, I laughed at the “Thanks for coming!” quip, and would have laughed even harder had he told “Nash” something like “Careful getting in the ring, big guy!”. Interesting, though, that WWE are now referencing TNA, albeit indirectly, on the air…

Wot, no Flair?

That Orton vs Jericho build is simmering nicely, should be ready to boil in three weeks when….whaddya mean 6 days!? Oh snap!

Just when I thought Elijah Burke was going to get a good rub, Batista annihilates him with a NASTY spear and squashes him. He looked decent to start, though.

Yes yes, Edge-Taker-Batista main eventing. AGAIN. YAWN.

Carlito is not only staying, but is in a ladder match with Jeff this week? Should be worth a look…

I wish I knew what they were doing/smoking in ECW. Punk is up against two behemoths and looking credible, but getting squish liek bug every week. Kofi Kingston is terrible on the mic and has Carlito’s gimmick, only as a face. We need to see Colt Cabana, Ace Steel, Matt Sydal (now OVW champ!)

Big Raw tonight. Huge. Can’t wait.

The Way I C the T

Wait, so Rellik is from the depths of Hell, has a great look, great theme music…and JOBS EVERY TIME? Who the heck is booking this shit? Oh right…

That was one fun ladder match, if too short. We got to see a poison rana (!!!), a ladder superplex, and a well-booked finish. Is this the same show that jobs out the same monster 4 times in a row?

Christian is gold on the mic. Just gold. I loved that promo.

What on earth did they expect to gain from referencing an old WWE angle on TNA programming? Talking about Angle’s fetish for Sharmell may have made the converts chuckle, but will it generate new viewers? Heck no.

Dear TNA, We have seen enough of Mitchell and Abyss. We don’t care about it any more. We want it to go away.

Smooth Moves volume 7 – Piledriver

No, not the album. The rather nasty, potentially deadly, legendary move now banned in WWE for all but a choice few. In some promotions, it is not only banned, but its use will result in a DQ. This was the case for a while in the AWA, and is still officially the case in Memphis, despite one of the move’s main proponents in Jerry Lawler basically owning that city. In Mexico, the move is also banned and results in a disqualification and often a kayfabe fine.

For all its notoriety, the piledriver has an important place in pro wrestling history. It has often been used when a wrestler wanted to injure his opponent. One example that comes right into my head was the match between Ted DiBiase and Virgil, for the Million $ Championship. Roddy Piper is on commentary with Monsoon, and we have a ref bump. DiBiase looks at Piper, who “spent an hour and a half drinking skimmed milk” with Virgil earlier in the day, and says “I got another one for you Piper” and proceeds to nail Virgil with a piledriver. In recent times, it has been done on stairs (Shawn Michaels), steel chairs (numerous), exposed concrete and more. The sheer impact to the head and neck and the compression of the spine make this move very dangerous to execute, its variants even more so.

I wasn’t able to track down the exact origins of the move, but the fact that the basic piledriver is known as the Texas Piledriver is a good suggestion as to where it became popular. The legendary Karl Gotch innovated the cradle version, and Paul Orndorff and Jerry Lawler were two of the older-school wrestlers to use the Texas variant, though I’m sure it was around long before.

As nasty as the basic piledriver looks, the numerous variants of it are many times worse. As there are so many, we’ll list them and provide examples.

Psycho Driver Brilliantly named, because you’d have to be a Psycho to take it. Also known as the Rack Piledriver. I am 98% positive this move was invented in Japan by Manami Toyota, but I haven’t been able to find a clip of her using it. I did, however, find one of Super Dragon, who is the only guy using it right now. Watch the ref after he hits the move:

Cradle Piledriver Most recently used by Jerry Lynn, this is almost identical to a normal piledriver, except the attacker hooks his arm between the victim’s legs, thus causing more downward thrust. Karl Gotch, as mentioned above, created this variant.

Super piledriver Now mostly known as the Rhyno Driver, because of this famous clip where he almost kills Kid Kash:

As you can see, it’s a top rope piledriver. I remember when I first started watching wrestling, I made my own ring with string, pencils and a piece of vinyl flooring left over. I would then use my extensive GI Joe collection to wrestle in the ring. For hours at a time. This move was Cobra Commander’s finisher. I was ahead of my time!

Double underhook Piledriver Also known as the Tiger Driver 98, and the PALM BEACH PLUNGE~! as used by Scotty Flamingo, who you may know now as Raven. Mitsuharu Misawa, the Japanese legend and owner of Pro Wrestling NOAH, is the most famous proponent of the move, but what many people might not know is that this move was originally meant to be a Tiger Driver:

That didn’t last. You think he buries people now? He could have been burying them with broken freakin’ necks!

Omega Driver Also known as a back suplex piledriver, this is REALLY nasty looking. Chuck Taylor, Indy darling and one of the few big Indy names not wrestling for RoH at least part-time, uses the move nowadays:

Package Piledriver Oh hell yes. Kevin Steen’s move of choice, and my favourite variant. It’s not the sickest looking, but Steen makes it look so stiff, which helps a lot:

Spike Piledriver The double-team spike piledriver can be even more dangerous. Most recently used in the WWE by Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, the Brainbusters, currently seen frequently in RoH from Hagadorn and Pearce.

Flip Piledriver Much as I wanted to give it its own column, the Canadian Destroyer is a piledriver variant, so it goes here. It has, of course, recently seen use in WWE to some degree with the West Texas Destroyer being employed by Trevor Murdoch, though it looks more like a power bomb. What many do not know, probably because they never get any wins in RoH and don’t wrestle many other places, is that Jake Crist of Irish Airborne has a better version. From the top rope, with a double underhook. As he calls it the Suicide Attempt, you’ll likely never find it on YouTube, but I had the privilege of seeing it once and will never mark for Petey’s version again.

There are numerous moves which could be considered as piledriver variants, but to me they deserve their own columns. For example, the Schwein/Air Raid Crash, the Emerald Fusion, the Michinoku Driver, the Snow Plow…all awesome. But they all end up with drops on the head, so I would think that…

In Search Of a Smooth Move

We had a finisher début! In this week’s Heat, reviewed by none other than yours truly, Santino finally showed us his finisher. I don’t think he quite got all of it, but from what I could tell (after about 6 viewings), it’s a cravate buster. Solid move, can look great if sold correctly, and very impactful. Fairly easy to pull out of nowhere too.

I also wanted to touch on something else from Heat, and that is Paul London again busting out some form of shooting star press, this time from a running start. Either he has special dispensation to do this, or he is flirting with a pink slip. Sure, it looked good, but it’s so dangerous I despair for the guy.

The Way U C Me

A little short on feedback this week. First up, Samer is back with the way he Cs several things:

Hey Chris, it’s Samer from Lebanon, with some thoughts on your column..
Nice choice for this week, as the Huracanrana is one of the most popular moves in wrestling.. It always seems to draw that: “ohhh” from the crowd once somebody does it.. And nearly all of its variations look quite cool..
I’d say the most dangerous is the Poison Frankensteiner, and my personal favorite is the DragonRana. How awesome is this move? I remember seeing it for the first time in WCW, used by Rey Mysterio Jr. I think it was in his awesome match against Eddie at Halloween Havoc 1997. That match is THE best north american cruiserweight match ever, Rey used to be so smooth, and his moves looked really sharp. Nothing wrong with him now of course, but with all the injuries he had to tone it down a little bit.
Another match with some of the best looking Ranas i’ve seen was a match between Rey and Ultimo Dragon in WCW, maybe at World War III, although i’m not sure.
The only problem i have is that the luchadors have used this move so much that it has slightly lost its impact. Especially that their matches almost entirely consist of high spots. That’s why i’d rather watch the Japanese light heavyweights.
And to clarify something about Shane Mcmahon using the SSP.. Since i was the one who questioned why would the WWE allow Shane to use the move. I was indeed referring to his match against Kurt Angle at KOTR 2001. Shane did use the move, but Kurt moved out of the way and shane ended up landing on a trash can, as one of your readers pointed out.
Another reader talked about AJ performing the SSP from the cables during an Ultimate X match. That is true. But it wasn’t against LAX. He did it on Daniels and Skipper. It was a match that consisted of 3 stages. The first one being a tag match, the second a triple threat and the third an Ultimate X match. However, Daniels, Skipper and AJ ended up using the cables in the second stage, and AJ did the SSP from the cables. Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as it sounds, because he didn’t fully connect with the move, because Daniels and Skipper were a bit farther than he had anticipated. Now he didn’t miss them completely, but didn’t connect completely either, which ended up looking not so bad. But could have been awesome. Daniels did a version of the BME from the cables in that match, that looked incredibly awesome.

BME from the cables? Sick. I couldn’t agree more about luchas watering down the rana, although most of their stuff ends up being a head scissors takedown. Still, along with the arm drag, they are overused in most lucha matches I’ve seen. No matter how much jumping around and flipping and twirling you do beforehand, they’re still basic moves!

Chris Jacobs is also back, with some insight on hitting the apron and a question on the DragonRana.

Yeah I know hitting the apron with any part of the body hurts. When we do shows, I HATE royal rumbles, or any reason to fly over the top, I always dred hitting that apron on accident. My fiance does the upside down choke someone on the top rope move (candince michelle used it), and when she let go with her legs, instead of dropping to the outside, she tried landing on the apron, and landed shins first across the apron, and actually took a chunk out of the skin, and broke the shin bone. Our ring has metal brackets that hold the long boards in place (its an old school style ring), and that is just the part she hit.
I always thought the Dragaonarana was Ultimo Dragon’s where he sets em up top, jumps onto the guys shoulders putting himself into the electric chair position, spins around to the front and hits the rana.

Opinion on the DragonRana is split. The one you refer to is called the DragonRana on boards like DVDVR, but Wikipedia and other sites I trust more prefer the other version with the flip. The upside down choke to which you refer is known as a figure four neck lock or headlock, and looks great when done right. It’s not hard to apply, but very hard to get out of without hurting something, and also hard to maintain what with being upside down for so long. I won’t make the obvious joke about your fiancée applying the hold to you…oh crap. Final feedback is the return of InnosourceATL, who implies my emails are junk. Which is OK, because he reads my stuff!

Unfortunately, I never saw an e-mail from you. Could be our work server blocking it, or it winding up in my junk folder and automatically getting deleting. Either case, enjoyed the column as usual and just a few thoughts.
I agree that Santino needs a submission finisher. I’d vote for something like a Dragon Sleeper/Clutch variation. Visually more impressive than a regular choke hold and just as effective. Though since you mentioned picking a body part, that may lead to a lot of chinlocks. Jericho’s Codebreaker is okay, but as has been said many times around the net, it’s a comedy wrestler’s transition move. I really was hoping he would have stolen something else from TNA/ROH like the Cradle Shock or something. If Sabin can get Nash up for it, then I’m sure Jericho can get just about anyone lighter than Umaga. If we can’t do Punk’s hammerlock DDT, why not go with London’s leg trip DDT? Why hasn’t someone made that a main event move yet? That shit looks deadly and makes sense against larger opponents since you’re tripping them into a head dropping move. As for Rellik, he’s a beast and he should have something to reflect that. I still remember when he military pressed Rikishi. Fuck Goldberg, let Rellik run with the Jackhammer or some variation of it. He might even get to win a match just so they can show off his finisher.
That Mascarita spot has been getting some good play on the interwebs and if there was ever anything wrestling needed more of, it’s skeletal replays. Is it me or is performing a good Huracanrana in the WWE becoming a lost art? I can’t think of a single one in the last year that didn’t look like an overly cooperative Frankensteiner.
Since I used up my one good guess the first time, I’ll just go with Figure Four. It’s old school. Only Flair, Finlay, and HHH have busted it out in recent memory and well, it’s better than wasting a guess on a bear hug. Though, the Million Dollar Dream/Cobra Clutch is old school. Can you tell I’m a mark for submission holds? Take it easy.

There are many worse things to mark for than submission holds, my friend. Lots to talk about here, we’ll start at the top. Santino would still be better served, in my mind, with a submission finisher. What they gave him is OK, but doesn’t suit his style. We’ll see how it plays out.

The Codebreaker is growing on me. Then again, so does facial hair, and I shave that off. I’m still not convinced, both because of Shark Boy using it and because Helms used something very similar recently, but it has a lot of good things going for it. I love the Cradle Shock, but it might be a bit dangerous for WWE. London’s leg trip DDT is nice. Very nice. Needs to be done more…by London.
I have given up all hope of Rellik, or RebboJ as Larry has coined him, ever getting to do a finisher.
A lot of moves fall into the category of being made to look shit in the WWE. Take the DDT as a prime example. There was a time when it spelt certain doom. Now, people are kicking out of rope-assisted ones. For shame! I would have to agree about the ‘rana though.

Well, there we are for another week. What’s next week, you ask? Well, I mentioned it in this column, so you can email me your guesses as always and get a chance to shine with your own opinion next week. It won’t kill you…unless your an insect.

Be sure to check out Ari, Larry, Slimmer, and the gang. And, if you can’t sleep, Bayani has a column too. Just hide the sharp objects before reading it.

Lansdellicious – Out.