WWE: The anatomy of Seth Rollins’ finishing moves

WWE has changed in an extraordinary way this past decade. Gone are the cartoony aesthetics and corny displays of machismo. Wrestlers like Seth Rollins now put emphasis on athleticism, action movie-esque sequences, and an endless variety of moves, a.k.a. “workrate”.

With that, you get a handful of wrestlers with an entire arsenal of finishing moves. Seth doesn’t continuously evolve through his strongest techniques just to be flashy. It’s in the nature of The Architect to use newer, more effective finishers, just as the roster is 100 matches away from figuring out the latest one.

This is the second episode in our The Anatomy Of series, where we explore the history, psychology, and physicality behind your favourite wrestlers’ signature moves.

Let’s take a look at Seth Rollins’ finishers through the years and break them down, I mean, ahem… BURN IT DOWN!

God’s Last Gift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtXLHqsCMVk

Under the alias of Tyler Black, Seth Rollins was nearly breaking necks with a disgusting Small Package/DDT hybrid. You have to do something brutal if you’re as young and hungry for stardom like Rollins in 2009. The manoeuvre is so brutal in fact that it was named after a song by the Metalcore band God Forbid.

God’s Last Gift doesn’t have the same exact effect as a regular Brainbuster. Hooking both of the legs arches the back, spiking the impact onto a few small upper vertebrae.

That’s nearly a combined 200kg directly to the neck and upper back. Most people can’t bench that at the gym. Combine that with an immediate pin upon landing and kicking out becomes almost impossible.

The Stomp

By the time Seth became signed to the WWE in 2012, most wrestlers from the independent scene have adapted to taking brainbusters on a regular basis. So now at the stage of the highest calibre, he had to come up with something twice as lethal and never before seen. Not only that but, it needed to be too fast to reverse. The Architect designed The Stomp.

The power behind The Stomp is leverage, which is what all Judo and Jiu-Jitsu throws are based on. What that essentially means is to take an opponent down with a strong body part (the knee and foot) that targets a weak body part (the neck).

The neck takes a staggering blow, but it’s only the secondary focus of the attack. It’s the face hitting the hard mat that the opponent should worry about. A wrestling ring is no Queen size bed. All there is stopping an ugly mug from hitting layers of plywood is canvas and a thin layer of foam.

Pedigree

Being a top-star of NXT, Triple H considered Seth Rollins to be his creation. Seth became a stooge for The Authority. When he won the WWE Championship, he began using the Pedigree, fully cementing the fact that Triple H had created him in his image.

If Hunter, now retired, can no longer have a reign of terror with that move at the forefront, he decided to choose who will. It’s classical tragic irony that Triple H fell victim to his own move at the hands of Rollins at Wrestlemania 33.

The Pedigree even works similarly to The Stomp from a physical standpoint. The drop damages the face as well as the chest. All the magic of the move is in the double arm hook. This stretches the pectoral muscles. A body part will be more vulnerable to impact when it is expanded as opposed to contracted.

Revolution Knee

After Wrestlemania 33, Seth Rollins abandoned the Pedigree as the last part of him tied to that part of his life. To “Rebuild, Redesign, Reclaim” is to take old weaknesses and turn them into strengths. It’s well known that Seth has had a history of knee injuries. Once his 2017 MCL tear was fully healed, he traded in the Pedigree for the Revolution Knee.

There are two basic parts to the move; a ripcord wrist lock and a high knee strike. The purpose of the ripcord is to throw off the opponents equilibrium. Rollins’ knee strike abruptly stops the re-calibration of the equilibrium.

From that, the brain generates theta waves which are a neural oscillatory pattern that happens during deep sleep. This gives Seth enough time to go for the cover before the opponent “wakes up”.

During Rollins’ hunt for the WWE Intercontinental Championship in 2018, he finally returned to the summit of RAW’s card. He had rebuilt himself and redesigned his fight strategy.

It was time to reclaim his spot with the move that got him there in the first place; The Stomp. That was the move that later earned Seth the Intercontinental title at Wrestlemania 34. The Architect was officially back in full capacity.

Tune in to WWE Raw every Monday night for a chance to see Seth Rollins land The Stomp again. Also, check out the previous instalment of The Anatomy Of, with the epic saga that led to Shinsuke Nakamura’s creation of the Kinshasa.