10 Moves Banned By WWE

Nobody likes it when they're banned from doing something and WWE stars are no different, as there have been points in time where certain individuals have been told they can't do certain moves, while in other instances there have been sweeping orders placed on other moves for the benefit of everyone in the locker room. 

This is usually done to protect the health of the talent, but not always.

These are 10 Moves Banned By WWE. 

10. Piledriver

Piledrivers are simple moves in theory, but the margin for error is so slim that something that should be easy to execute can have catastrophic consequences if it is done incorrectly.

This is exactly what happened at SummerSlam 1997 when Owen Hart, one of the best wrestlers in the world at the time, dropped Steve Austin during a sit-out tombstone piledriver, handing Austin a broken neck in the process.

It was incidents such as this one, plus a bunch of other wrestlers going under the knife for neck fusion surgery, that convinced WWE to ban the piledriver and its various variations, save for a few wrestlers – such as The Undertaker, Kane and Shawn Michaels – that Vince McMahon trusted to do them safely every time.

Ken Kennedy has since spoken about the telling off he received from Vince McMahon when 'Taker directed him to perform a piledriver during their first match with each other.

Kennedy said on Rewind Recap Relive:

"My first match experience I had with 'Taker, I'm just listening to him and he's down on his knees and he goes, 'Give me a piledriver.' So I'm thinking like, oh, he's going to backdrop me out of it. So I pull him in and I'm standing there and I'm waiting for him to like backdrop me and he goes, 'God damn, give it to me.' He's a heavy dude. You know, he's 270 pounds. So I can pinch his head so tight between my legs and made sure that I held him up as much as I could with my arms. I gave him the piledriver.

"I come to the back after the match. Walk through the curtain and Vince goes, 'Come here'. He goes, 'I know where that came from. I know Taker told you to do that. He's trying to get you over. I allow two people to do piledrivers in this company and you're not one of them.'"

CM Punk also suffered the wrath of his then-boss after hitting John Cena with a piledriver during their classic on the February 25th, 2013 edition of Raw.

H/T Fightful

9. German Suplex

Similar to the piledriver, WWE opted to eliminate German suplexes, as well as other tricky variations like the overhead belly-to-belly suplex, during the early 2000s. 

The reasons were related to members of the roster suffering major neck injuries, along with one or two ugly landings that were considered close calls. As with the piledriver, however, there were exceptions when it came to a few who were still permitted to do the moves, including Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, and Brock Lesnar. 

Vince McMahon knew the trio were safe with how they landed people and trusted them not to injure anyone with an errant throw. Angle has noted that he was personally very grateful for being an exception, since suplexes amounted to a high percentage of his offensive arsenal. 

In recent years, Mick Foley has advocated for toning down the use of German suplexes, if not outright banning them, claiming that they shorten careers and ruin the quality of life for people who consistently take them.

8. The Shooting Star Press & 450 Splash

There were several scary situations when it came to WWE stars performing the shooting star press and 450 splash in the early-to-mid 2000s. 

Brock Lesnar famously poleaxed himself and was lucky to walk away after coming up short in the WrestleMania XIX main event, while Chavo Guerrero was knocked out for several minutes when Billy Kidman’s knee struck him in the temple during a match on the August 26, 2004 edition of SmackDown. WWE didn’t ban the shooting star press then but, in fact, wrote the Kidman incident into a storyline. 

When Juventud Guerrera botched his 450 Splash on Paul London on the July 14, 2005 episode of SmackDown, however, McMahon said enough was enough and outlawed not only the 450 splash, but the shooting star press as well. 

London actually pleaded with his boss in an attempt to get him to change his mind since he had performed both moves seamlessly in the past. McMahon was unmoved, however, and not only kept the ban in place, but punished London for daring to argue with him by having London drop the Cruiserweight Title to Nunzio on Velocity.  

It was only several years later that WWE okayed the likes of Evan Bourne and Justin Gabriel to bring the moves back. 

7. Chops

While knife-edge chops certainly sting the chest of the person on the receiving end of them, nobody ever suffered a serious injury from taking one. There was no fear of a risk to the wrestler's health when WWE decided to outlaw them in the late 2000s. 

While a report surfaced in the summer of 2010 that WWE had banned the strikes, theorising that WWE didn’t want their fans to go ‘Woooo!’ now that Ric Flair was in TNA, it turned out that chops had been on the banned list for a while by that point. 

After those reports surfaced, former WWE referee Jimmy Korderas revealed that chops had, in fact, been banned for years, with only Flair and Shawn Michaels allowed to use them. Korderas further stated that there would sometimes be a ‘NO CHOPS!’ sign posted in the Gorilla position to remind wrestlers not to slap chests during matches. 

In 2022, former ECW whipping boy Colin Delaney confirmed that management had specifically told the locker room not to use chops in 2008, with only The Heartbreak Kid getting to use them after he had retired Flair at WrestleMania XXIV.

"Things over in WWE seem to change like the wind seemingly. I remember one time where we did a meeting and nobody was allowed to chop but Shawn Michaels. Then like a month later I was out the door and everyone chopped. Sometimes it goes like that and they're just real set on one thing. But that's not forever, nothing is forever," Delaney told Wrestling Inc.

6. The Vertebreaker

Shane Helms really started to make a name for himself in the dying days of WCW, breaking away from boy band stable Three Count while using his patented Vertebreaker to bag the promotion’s Cruiserweight Title.  

It was an incredible move that certainly looked capable of ending any match, but Helms himself knew it wasn’t going to last when he joined WWE following WCW’s demise. 

Though he used it on a couple of occasions, Helms – who had since found even more success as hapless superhero The Hurricane – was told by WWE management that he wasn’t allowed to hit the move anymore. 

Helms later confirmed the banning, noting that the edict came directly from Vince McMahon himself. He didn’t try to save the move, either, since he didn’t really need it and understood where the concern about neck injuries was coming from, even if he did think the move was easy to take as long as the person on the receiving end tucked their chin properly.

"But when WWE banned it, that was a time in the business where a lot of guys got hurt with piledrivers so they said 'Eliminate it, all piledriver-type manoeuvres except for the Tombstone.' But all the other piledrivers got eliminated and basically my boss said, 'Don’t do it.' I'm one of those weird people, I do what my boss says. And at the same time, there was only about three people I could even pick up at that particular time. Everybody was gigantic back then, so it wasn't a big deal for me. I didn't mind doing the Eye of the Hurricane, I actually invented that move. So, that was fine with me," Helms told Fightful.

5. The Wings of Love

Michelle McCool’s finishing moves in WWE were heavily inspired by TNA Wrestling, with the talent using the Faith Breaker, a version of the Styles Clash, and the Wings of Love, a version of the Angel’s Wings popularised by Christopher Daniels. 

McCool was told to stop using the Wings of Love, however, as WWE considered the move to be “too devastating” for a Diva to use. McCool wasn’t happy with having the move taken away from her, especially for the reason she was given, but she got on with it and made the Faithbreaker her own.

A decade later, Mandy Rose took the double underhook sitout facebuster and used it as a finisher, dubbing it the Bed of Roses.

4. The Muscle Buster

Samoa Joe had a long and illustrious career in Ring of Honor, TNA, and on the independents before he made the move to WWE in 2015. 

During that time, the Samoan Submission Machine’s weapon of choice was the Muscle Buster, an incredibly impactful move that was a cross between a suplex and a piledriver. Joe had delivered the move countless times in the past without issue, but everything changed when he competed against Tyson Kidd in a dark match. 

Joe was going over and used the Muscle Buster to win. As he was celebrating, however, it quickly became apparent that all was not well with his opponent. It turned out that Kidd had actually suffered damage to his neck and spine that would have killed a normal man. Luckily, he survived and was able to have a second career as a backstage producer, but his bumping days were over.

So too were Joe’s days of using the finisher as he initially avoided the Muscle Buster and just used the Coquina Clutch before the move eventually made a return.  

3. Steel Chair Shots To The Head

WWE getting rid of chair shots to the head was initially controversial, but it was undoubtedly the correct decision in order to safeguard the long-term health of talent. 

At a certain point in time, though, taking a full-force, unprotected chair shot to the head was simply the done thing and the wrestlers themselves saw taking it as something of a badge of honour. In a post-Benoit world, where we now more a lot more about the dangers of concussions and the effects of CTE, having big, musclebound men swinging steel at each other’s heads just simply wasn't going to work. 

Despite being the most tenured locker room leader and Vince McMahon’s son-in-law, The Undertaker and Triple H were levied with a hefty fine when they ignored the ban at WrestleMania XXVII.

In today's WWE, wrestlers will only dish out chair shots to the stomach or back of their opponents. The pop might not be as big, but retaining cognitive function is certainly better than momentarily hearing the sound of cheers.

2. The Curb Stomp

Seth Rollins must have thought he was on to a winner when he started using the curb stomp as a finishing move. It was a move that was easy to execute, looked deadly, and could be hit on anyone from multiple setups while also being easy to counter. 

It ticked pretty much all of the boxes that a WWE finisher should, but despite using it to bag his first WWE Title at WrestleMania 31, The Architect was soon informed that he would have to find something different from them on. 

According to Rollins, Vince McMahon decided to ban the curb stomp because he felt it looked too violent. Now that Seth was WWE World Heavyweight Champion, McMahon didn’t want clips of him stomping people's heads into the mat to be replayed in the media for fear that children might try to copy it. 

Rollins didn’t agree with McMahon’s logic and pushed back, but the decision was final. In the aftermath, Seth started using the Pedigree, which made sense since he was a heel member of The Authority under the tutelage of Triple H at the time. 

Some time later, he was allowed to use the curb stomp once again, though its name was tweaked to simply the stomp.

1. The Punt

Randy Orton is generally considered one of the safest wrestlers on the WWE roster. Fans will rarely see The Viper do anything – or take anything – that he’s not 100 per cent sure about and his repertoire is predominantly made up of moves that carry with them very little risk.

When he was a heel during the late 2000s, though, Orton used the punt which saw him kick his foe hard in the side of their head while they were lying prone on their hands and knees. There was a way to work the move but Orton was typically told to “lay it in” to make sure the finishing manoeuvre looked good on TV. 

The move was a little too good when Orton used it against Vince McMahon, however, as the then-WWE Chairman suffered a concussion when Randy kicked him in the head. 

After the boss himself had experienced how badly the move could go, it was shelved. It was only after more than a decade in 2020 that Orton was allowed to bring it back during his new Legend Killer run.