The Miz on the Origin of His Skull Crushing Finale Finisher

– In a video on his TikTok account, WWE Superstar The Miz reveals how he came up with his finisher, The Skull Crushing Finale, and how Dean Malenko helped him come up with the move. Below are some highlights:

On going from wearing shorts to wearing trunks: “How did I come up with my finisher? So, if you remember, I used to wear shorts, and I was a tag team superstar, and one time, the one time, I wore trunks, literally, from then on, I was wearing trunks for the rest of my life, like, the rest of my career. Like, it was just happening. So once that switch happened to trunks, I had to find a new finisher and a new character and a new kind of — just be more serious.”

The Miz on how Dean Malenko and Arn Anderson helped: “So I went with Dean Malenko and Arn Anderson, and every live event, every television, Monday Night Raw, like, we would literally be just racking our brains on different finishers. He first came up with the knee DDT, which everyone thought was a half-DDT, so no. Then the knee lift into the neckbreaker, which was my former one, which I called the Reality Check, and they’re like, ‘That’s just not a finisher.’ Then I re-upped it, what if I doing it into one move? That didn’t work for him either. Then one day, Dean was like, ‘Why don’t you try and do a full nelson and sweep the front of his legs and see if that works.’ And we did it and everyone seemed to like it. I liked it because I could pretty much do it on everybody, and so that is how the Skull Crushing Finale was created.”

@mikethemiz Replying to @mowgl1293 How the #SkullCrushingFinale was created 😎 #WWE #WWERaw #roadtowrestlemania #wrestlemania #themiz ♬ original sound – MikeTheMiz