Heel Submission Finishers

If Ted DiBiase had recruited Rodney Mack as his bodyguard, do you think he would have said 'I'll make you a miwwionaire Rodney'?

Ok, maybe not, that isnt my article, here goes.

Back in the day we saw more heels implement submission finishers and they were relatively succesful with them. Ted DiBiase with the Million Dollar Dream, Ric Flair with the Figure 4 Leglock, Sgt Slaughter and the Cobra Clutch, Bob Backlund and the Crossface Chicken Wing, just a few examples. All four of these 'heel' wrestlers were very succesful in their prime even though 'super faces' such as Hogan and Bret Hart were the main fan attraction at the time.

Now i ask, why is it that the submission finisher is rarely seen by a heel in this day and age? The best example i can give for this is Chris Jericho. As a face he often won using the Walls of Jericho, yet as a heel nobody ever tapped out to it and he had to adopt the Codebreaker to win matches. So why is it that the top heels of today dont have submission moves in their arsenal? Is it because the WWE dont want the 'super faces' of today such as Cena, Orton and Mysterio to be seen as weak and they dont want the 'WWE Universe' to see their 'heroes' submit? Why were the above mentioned 80's stars so succesful with their submission moves? Would someone like CM Punk benefit from a submission finisher? And has the Ankle Lock held Jack Swagger back? Does he need an impact finisher to make his way back up the card?

Thanks for reading, and i look forward to your views on this.

Punk has brought out the annaconda vice on occasions, eg when he got traded to raw, didnt he use it on Bourne?

what about Alberto Del Rio with his armbar?

Hobo good point mate, Del Rio is the rare case of a main event heel using a submission move and actually winning with it. But unless he adopts another finisher i fear for him, i mean how many matches can you win using an armbar? Chris Masters looked awesome when he burst onto the scene and nobody could break the Masterlock, but where is he now?

Samoa Joe was another heel who used to use subs as finishers - it is more common in TNA.

One thing I noticed on Lockdown was the amount of MMA style stuff going on - Joe used a rear naked choke as did JJ.

Del Rio definitely needs a secondary finisher. The armbar is all well and good but he needs an impact move as well. Maybe he could nick Carlito's Backstabber?

The most likely explanation for heels not using submissions as much these days is probably the fact that Vince has become obsessed with his top stars looking 'strong'. Fair enough you don't want them tapping left, right & centre but it's unrealistic for heels to beat some guys with a move but when they put it on a super face they hold them in it for an age before super face escapes/reverses it.

They should play on the fact that anyone can get caught, and these moves are so dangerous that they hurt everyone, regardless of who they are or what their status is. Remember Brock Lesnar's UFC debut? He pounded the tar out of Frank Mir but then got caught in a knee bar and had to tap. Did Lesnar come across as a woose? No, he came across as a badass who was caught out by a more experienced opponent with a painful submission move and had no option but to tap or face serious injury.

In my opinion WWE should occasionally focus on the fact that these guys have to wrestle again the next night in the next town, so tapping out isn't a sign of weakness, it's a case of living to fight another day.

In fairness, I can never remember a time when top faces regularly lost by submission. They have only ever worked for babyfaces.

Of the four examples you give, I can't remember a top babyface ever submitting to any of them. Even Flair's figure four was almost never the finishing move when he was a main event heel.

Submission holds have always been portrayed in wrestling as something that babyfaces escape and heels submit to. And it makes sense; in the morality tale that is wrestling, you don't want to portray a hero as a quitter.

I don't recall Hogan, Warrior, Savage, Piper, Rhodes, Sting, Goldberg, Bret, Michaels, Austin or Rock ever submitting when they were main event babyfaces (and I'm pretty sure Thesz, Sammartino, Backlund and Gagne never did either). In fact the only main event babyfaces I can think of submitting have been in recent years (888, Michaels, Rey). Any time a heel ever made a babyface submit in the past, it was always someone lower down the totem pole being used to put the heel over.

Well, that just blew my article out of the water, cheers crips!!

The Rodney joke was good though.

I remember way back in 92 when Flair won the World Title off Savage in the figure Four, they sold his injury so much yet they still didn't have him submit, the rather had him pass out in pain, same when Backkund lost the title in 84, They didn't have him give up either, they just threw the towel in

Dolph Ziggler used the sleeper quite a lot last year, even put down the likes of Kane and Khali with it. Swagger of course has left the gut-wrench back in the locker-room in favour of the ankle lock.

So we have:

Alberto Del Rio
CM Punk
Dolph Ziggler
Jack Swagger

All heels using submission finishers, so I don't think there is an urgent need for more at the moment. I do agree though, not enough matches finish by submission.

They need to put more emphasis on Daniel Bryan as a submission specialist. Have him in matches where he gets the absolute tar beaten out of him for 10 minutes before getting hold of an arm or leg to get the other guy tapping like a girl. The laBell lock is fine, but give him more options to finish a match like a guillotine choke, arm-bar, keylock, etc. so you never know quite where the finish is going to come from.

bernard black wrote:They need to put more emphasis on Daniel Bryan as a submission specialist. Have him in matches where he gets the absolute tar beaten out of him for 10 minutes before getting hold of an arm or leg to get the other guy tapping like a girl. The laBell lock is fine, but give him more options to finish a match like a guillotine choke, arm-bar, keylock, etc. so you never know quite where the finish is going to come from.

Me likea dis.

Bernard, take a bow son, take a bow

I agree Del Rio needs a secondary finisher but comparing him to Masters is wrong i feel, they played up the masterlock as a move no one can get out of, something they haven't done with the arm bar

It's a decent thought provoking article but Crips post is spot on....

Case Study...Bret Harts sharpshooter

As the companys lead babyface for 1/2 a decade Bret Hart beat heels for fun with his sharpshooter... All of a sudden over the course of one match at Wrestlemania 13 the Sharpshooter can't put away the face turning Steve Austin...Taker broke it for the 1st time at the next pay-per-view. Only The Patriot was beaten with it when Bret was a heel