The Best Moves Ever: Cattle Mutilation

First up, Taz did post answers to questions he got on Monday, but there was nothing really newsworthy. If you're on Facebook, look him up.

Secondly, if you notice, I added a new sidebar to the links section, featuring cool non-wrestling or tangentially related to wrestling. There are links to PTC (which is long overdue since Ross has most graciously created an RSS feed for this blog in their wrestling forum), some sports blogs I like and Sean Morley/Val Venis' libertarian blog, where he also talks about wrestling from time to time. If you're interested in having content on the sidebar, please let me know. I will review the site you have, and if I like it, it'll go over on the side. This goes for wrestling and non-wrestling material alike. However, I ask that you don't really give suggestions for stuff that's wildly popular. I could have put links up there to ICanHasCheezburger or ThisIsWhyYou'reFat, but really, everyone knows what they are. I'm more into getting written content there, be it funny, witty, thought-provoking or just plain good.

Alright, now that that's over, it's onto the meat of the post! Again, this is coming directly from YOUR feedback! That's why you leave comments, I do respond to them!

Submissions are sometimes put on the backburner because they can't really be hit suddenly like an impact finisher. Part of what makes the Diamond Cutter, Rock Bottom, Sweet Chin Music, RKO and even the Codebreaker such over finishers is that they can be hit with very little set-up, with an air of suddenness. Still, many hardcore wrestling fans love the submission finisher because it represents the culmination of an entire match of work, of build, especially from a master wrestler. They drip of old-school dredging memories of Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Sting and Ted DiBiase to the surface of our wrestling consciousness.

While impact finishers are definitely more common, the submission finisher is not dead, not by a long shot. Many wrestlers in the bigs rely on tried and true finishing submissions as either their primary or secondary tap-out holds. However, you can find some of the most innovative, creative and downright impossible-looking submission holds. To me, the king of these holds comes from Bryan Danielson, arguably the hottest and most talented wrestler on the indie circuit today. His submission finisher is called Cattle Mutilation. It's an upper-body submission with a lot of athleticism and balance involved. Take a look:



It's almost like a throwback to the old full nelson with a great modern twist put on it. Personally, I have no freaking idea how Danielson keeps the move locked in for the durations of time that he does, but he does. Even if you don't think it looks like it hurts (the way he applies it makes it look like the most painful thing ever to me... mark of a great wrestler!), you have to give him mad props for being able to perfect a move as crazy and cool looking as that is.