10 Wrestlers Who Hated Taking Someone Else's Finisher

A wrestler’s finishing move is often meant to be the high point of a match – or indeed a whole show – and is something that the fans who take a seat in the stands show up expecting to see. 

As much as fans may love seeing these signature specials, wrestlers themselves don’t always like to be on the receiving end of them. Ordinarily, this is because these moves genuinely hurt. Sometimes, however, they actually hurt the recipient’s pride more than their body. 

These are 10 Wrestlers Who Hated Taking Someone Else’s Finisher. 

10. Diamond Dallas Page - Randy Savage's Elbow Drop

Diamond Dallas Page always goes out of his way to give props to Randy Savage for helping to make him a legitimate main eventer. It was the Macho Man who decided to work with and put over DDP in WCW, something the master of the Diamond Cutter is forever grateful for. 

One aspect of working with Savage that Dallas did not appreciate, however, was having to take his flying elbow drop finisher on a nightly basis. Randy had used the move for many years and his version looked as pretty as anyone else’s. Yet practice did not make perfect when it came to making sure his opponent walked away unscathed. 

According to DDP, one particularly brutal elbow drop caused him to urinate blood for the duration of their feud. In Page’s own words, his kidneys and ribs were ‘trashed’ afterwards and doctors suggested he take time off, but he wasn’t about to turn down the chance to work a programme with Savage. 

Page later asked Macho Man to hit him lower with the move, only for Randy to instead hit him in the face, giving him a nasty concussion.

9. Bret Hart - Booker T's Scissor Kick

If there’s one thing you didn’t want to do when you wrestled Bret Hart, it was hurt him. The Excellence of Execution took great pride in taking care of his opponents while working a snug, believable style and resented anyone who didn’t afford him the same courtesy. 

That didn’t always happen, though, and during a 2024 virtual signing, The Hitman noted that he hated taking Booker’s Scissor Kick finisher when the two worked together in WCW. 

According to Bret, the move was dangerous and drove his head right into the mat every time. After a few times of this happening, Hart had to ask Booker to stop hitting him with it.  

Responding to the accusation that he was ‘trying to kill’ Bret, Booker noted that he never meant to hurt him and didn’t think he did, but conceded that might have been the case. Regardless, he had only positive memories of working with Hart. 

Bret certainly isn’t shy about calling out moves he doesn’t like, having previously singled out the Doomsday Device and even simple chops as things he tried to avoid, as well as anything delivered by Bill Goldberg. 

8. Rob Van Dam - Hardcore Holly's Alabama Slam

Considering he was a kickboxer and tough man contest competitor before honing his skills in ECW and All Japan, it’s no surprise that Rob Van Dam has a reputation for toughness. 

As well as being able to handle himself in real fight situations, The Whole F’N Show made a point to demonstrate his durability by taking all manner of crazy moves and bumps. Though he may have been keen to go through a table or take a German suplex right on his neck, the move that RVD never liked taking was, on the surface, a relatively simple one. 

For Van Dam, the Alabama Slam – made famous by former WWE star Hardcore Holly – was the worst move that he consistently took. 

Speaking about it on his podcast, Rob noted that he never learned how to take it so that it didn’t end up killing him, something that began when he first took the move from Del ‘The Patriot’ Wilkes in Japan during the mid-1990s. 

RVD explained that there’s not much you can do to break your momentum and were, essentially, at the mercy of the person delivering it.

7. Sabu - Test's Running Big Boot

Like his tag team partner Rob Van Dam, Sabu has a reputation for exceptional toughness, a rep he has earned 50 times over. After all, this is a man who wrestled with broken bones and once used crazy glue to seal a wound caused by barbed wire, his scars telling the story of a career full of extreme ring battles. 

Sabu may have been good at taking abuse, but he wasn’t a masochist and would have preferred to have gotten through a match unscathed if possible. That wasn’t possible when he was booked against Test during WWE’s rebooted version of ECW. 

Test had not long been brought back to WWE after a two-year absence and was being pushed as one of the top heels on the brand. Sabu was one of the unfortunate talents who had to take Test’s running big boot finisher, which Sabu claimed would knock him out every time. 

After seeing stars for the umpteenth time, Sabu told Test he could no longer do the move to him if he couldn’t work it so that it was safe, to which Test replied ‘No, Vince wants me to use it. He told me to kill you with it’.

6. Eric Bischoff - Rikishi's Stinkface

If you were a heel in WWE while Rikishi was in his pomp, chances were you were going to get an up close and personal view of his bottom. Pretty much everyone on the roster took the Stinkface, including main eventers, divas and even Vince and Stephanie McMahon. 

It didn’t take long for WWE to book a segment for former WCW SVP Eric Bischoff to receive the move, which he did as the payoff to an angle at Unforgiven 2002. Bischoff must have known he was going to get some receipts for the Monday Night Wars, and while he was okay with most of the humiliating stuff he was scripted to do, he had a real problem with taking the Stinkface. 

Speaking about his resistance to it on his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff noted that he wasn’t big on the idea of the Stinkface and complained to the writers, but ultimately swallowed his medicine and decided that he’d do his best with the situation.

5. Bob Backlund - Diesel's Jackknife Powerbomb

At WWE’s Madison Square Garden house show on November 26, 1994, Diesel shockingly beat Bob Backlund to win the WWE Title, just three days after Backlund had beaten Bret Hart for it at Survivor Series.

Not only was the result shocking, but so too was the manner in which Big Daddy Cool bagged the belt, hitting Bob with a boot to the gut and his favoured Jackknife Powerbomb to get the win in eight seconds. 

A pretty easy night’s work for Backlund, you might think, but the transitional champ was fuming afterwards. According to Bruce Prichard on his Something to Wrestle podcast, Bob returned to the MSG dressing room following the squash and began ranting to Prichard about how he would never take the move again. 

Backlund had hurt his tailbone on the rough landing, which is hardly surprising given how stiff WWE’s rings were at the time, not to mention Kevin Nash’s habit of simply letting his opponents go in mid-air, rather than guide them down to the canvas. 

4. The Undertaker - Sid's Powerbomb

The powerbomb is typically a move that is performed on the ‘smaller’ wrestlers, because it’s a very hard thing to do on a giant. At close to seven feet tall and clocking in at over 300 pounds, The Undertaker wasn’t taking too many powerbombs, though he did take a few during his long and illustrious career. 

The Undertaker wasn’t a fan, though, and during a Q&A session on his Patreon page, The Deadman revealed that his least favourite finisher to take was, in fact, the powerbomb, referring to it as a ‘bone rattler’. 

‘Taker didn’t relish taking the move and noted that the landing varied depending on who was delivering it. While the aforementioned Diesel was one of the very few who could get The Phenom up for the powerbomb, ‘Taker namechecked Sid’s version as the one he liked to take the least, as The Master and Ruler of the World was ‘always in a hurry’ to get his opponents down, which resulted in added force. 

3. Kurt Angle - The Undertaker's Last Ride

When The Undertaker returned with his new American Badass persona in 2000, he brought a new finishing move with him. The Tombstone Piledriver was out, while the Chokeslam would still be used but it was not Mark Calaway’s primary match-ender. That was instead The Last Ride, a powerbomb where ‘Taker would grab his opponent’s waistband and lift them an extra foot or so in the air, before drilling them to the mate. 

This would hurt and Kurt Angle claimed the Last Ride would literally knock the faeces out of you. Angle’s advice for anyone who had to take the move was to go to the toilet beforehand, as the move was so intense it could cause an involuntary bowel movement. 

2. Bobby Heenan - The Ultimate Warrior's Gorilla Press Slam

Nobody is going to accuse The Ultimate Warrior of being a technically sound professional wrestler. Jim Hellwig’s alter-ego was more about the costume, the physique and the entrance and everything besides the actual wrestling part of the presentation. 

His matches were usually short and to the point, but despite being basic and brief, Warrior often hurt the people he was in the ring with and developed a reputation for being reckless. 

One person who really didn’t like working with Warrior was Bobby Heenan, who wrestled a bunch of Weasel Suit matches against Hellwig. 

The Brain didn’t think much of Warrior as a worker or Hellwig as a person and often found himself feeling sore after their matches. Heenan even found himself worse for wear after Warrior’s matches against people he was managing, such as when Warrior took on Rick Rude at WrestleMania V. 

After the bout’s conclusion, Warrior hit Bobby with his Press Slam finisher, carelessly dropping the manager like a sack of spuds. Heenan – who had a dodgy neck – didn’t appreciate this negligence and made a vow to never take the move again.

1. Triple H - The Rock's People's Elbow

During a 2017 interview with BBC Radio 1, Triple H cited his feud with The Rock as the best of his career because their ascent to the main event happened at the same time and they helped make each other. 

In the very same interview, The Game also derided The Great One’s People’s Elbow finisher, calling it the hokiest in the history of the business. 

The move originated as something The Rock would do on house shows to try and get The Undertaker to break character, before making its way to television. 

Hunter didn’t enjoy having to take it (and he had to take it often), because it required lying on the ground for about 20 seconds while The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment went through the whole, elaborate schtick that comprised the Most Electrifying Move in Sports Entertainment. 

He also felt it looked weak, yet The Rock would sometimes catch Helmsley in the face and bust his mouth open, making it a legitimately painful experience.