Does WWE Limit Their Wrestling Moves To A Certain Extent?

[123NewChamp]

Hello everyone, I need help understanding something. I've Watched the Network TV Debut of Ring Of Honor Wrestling like a few weeks ago; and watched it again last Saturday. And I noticed some moves that some of the tag team wrestlers were doing even some single wrestlers. And I've been watching wrestling since 1996 and the moves I've saw were creative to the T. And some moves were done that I thought were impossible to do. And I also noticed the chairshots to the head and the brutal hits to the head. But I know about the headshots, and why WWE limits them. But I also remember Generation Me's TNA debut and their tag matches, and they performed some moves also I didn't never seen before. And really when I first saw Ring Of Honor, I've gotten reminded of ECW. Because of the ruthless, hard-knocked style that ECW had. And I kinda beleive that ROH is real.

But on to the question.......Do you beleive that WWE really put a limit on the types of move it's wrestlers can do or even perform?

And do if The WWE really has a restriction on the type of moves it's wrestlers perform, do you think they can ease up a bit and allow more creativity to their moveset besides a finishing or signature maneuver?

Tell me what you all think and help me understand this. Thanks in Advance Guys.

 

[MoRtAnDaD]

of course they limit the moves.

In fact, you wont see a piledriver (other than takers tombstone) for example. Thats in part for safety and on the other hand i think that limit the moves in a match makes look important when someone do a "new or not common move". Its a way to fix the moves to each character and have them perform a very limited set of moves that identify em to the viewers.

From time to time you see some good stuff (specially on ppvs) in match like cena vs punk at mitb, where they have a little more freedom to perform, thus having the result in a match with a more shocking factor.

I would love to see more variety of moves, but the fact is, WWE doesnt perform (most the time) wrestling as we know it. Its more entertainment.

 

[bfred27]

I do believe that the WWE limits the types of moves their wrestlers can do. I know the shooting star press use to be banned up until Bourne could prove he could do it without any risk. You dont see any type of piledrivers except the undertaker. I use to enjoy watching the suplex brain buster, but that move is all but banned. I will say that most of the restrictions are in place for the safety of the wrestlers involved. They dont want to see any injuries due to a botched move. With that all said, I still would like to see more creativity in move sets. I mean guys like Sin Cara, Evan Bourne and so on could do some crazy high flying moves if they were given the chance

 

[aussiewwefan]

yes wwe does limit wrestlers move sets like jerry lawler used to do a pilediver simple anwser yes they limit the wrestlers move because most of the wrestle could do have of the moved

 

[hollowpoint]

There is no question that the WWE limits the moves that a Superstar does in the ring. In organization like ROH, there aren't any limits, simply because their fanbase isn't what the "E" is and ROH will do whatever it takes to draw a crowd. With the "E" as global and successful as it is, safety is now the #1 concern for the company. You never want to go to a show and not see your favorite Superstar perform and that is what the "E" tries to prevent.

I see them letting up a little bit, but only in big events and in big matches like one of the big four PPVs or something that draws big numbers. It's been a formula that has worked over the past 7-10 years and I don't think they are going to mess with it.

 

[The Suplexer Perfecter]

Yes they do, but for different reasons. They banned the piledriver because it's too dangerous for example.

They also don't book the matches like a crazy ROH match because they do travel 300 days a year with like 4 events a week.

 

[Sheamus' Suntan]

It's called safety but also they want to tell a story.

The thing with ROH is they put on amazing matches, but they never REALLY tell you a thing. It's just 2 guys fighting. It's RARE that you ever get a sense of feeling from a match, I can think of a handful of matches where you do get that. WWE tries to tell a story more with their matches, and what they REALLY are doing now, is TV shows they limit heavily then at PPV's they allow the guys more free reign.

The reason for this is it gets people to buy more PPVs.

For instance, you buy a PPV and you get Punk vs Cena where theyre going all out and hitting amazing moves youve never seen on TV. Of course you'll buy the next one because...well...you want to see it again.

ROH treats every show like a PPV because they have to in order to survive. If they don't treat every match like its their last then ROH will die. It's that simple. They don't limit their moves, but in the end, it'll cause more damage to their guys than good.

 

[DexVendetta88]

The limitation of moves being imposed on wrestlers is nothing new at all in the WWE. Aside from safety, another reason why they limit moves is to help guys get over by selling a small number of moves (i.e. five moves of doom) to put away an opponent. When you take that away, you really have nothing but rest holds, irish whips, and clotheslines. My prime example for all this is Hulk Hogan. If you watch any of his matches from Japan, he uses a far greater moveset than what he does here; even moves you wouldn't expect him to do (i.e. Enziguri).

 

[#hamler]

Yeah they do, but why's it matter?

You don't think someone like John Cena or Randy Orton could go out and perform a well-executed Frankinsteiner or dive over the top ropes for an incredibly risky, but unnecessary high spot? They don't need to. Wrestling isn't about the amount of moves you perform in a match, rather how you tell the story of the match. If so many moves were important, Evan Bourne or John Morrison would be multi-time World Champions right now. So of course they limit their wrestlers but it doesn't matter in the slightest. We're still gonna see great matches. We're still gonna see the WWE as a bigger company then ROH because of the importance of storytelling rather then the amount of moves a wrestler does.

I would love to see more variety of moves, but the fact is, WWE doesnt perform (most the time) wrestling as we know it. Its more entertainment.

No. Its wrestling. As much as you want to believe it isn't wrestling, it still is. Just because their wrestlers don't flip 68579925450 times in the air and land split legged with their dicks in the opponent's mouth doesn't mean it isn't wrestling. Wrestling isn't about moves - it never has been.

 

[mrpops]

They limit even super safe moves simply to reduce bumps to the back. Thats why your seeing millions of kicks nowadays.

It wasnt too long ago we would see simple moves like a Body back drop, suplex, back drops, body slams. Now we see now of those.

 

[fereality]

Oh hell yeah they do.
This is the reason I get so po'd at people who start calling Cena a "5 move wrestler". I still love the product but wish they'd let people do what they can.

 

[wrestlingfanusa]

It's where tna has done best. I remember that jack evans match where he did a front dropkick and then a hurricarana through the middle rope and it got me pumped. Not to mention the canadian destroyer.

 

[Peoples_Champ]

Speaking to the OP's original point, part of the reason is that some moves are banned by McMahon (piledriver the most obvious example), but I also think a factor is a lack of creativity from the current wrestlers. Macho Man had an elbow drop off the top rope as his finisher and people loved it - CM Punk brought it back and people still love it. How come nobody else had the foresight to do this? Warrior's gorilla press slam and splash, why doesn't Mason Ryan or Ezekial Jackson incorporate this combination? Part of the problem is that wrestlers these days aren't being creative with their movesets - you don't need to have a never-before-seen move to be creative, tried and true moves from past generations will always get a reaction.

The question I have is that which moves have been limited? We all know about the piledriver, but what about Rick Rude's neckbreaker or Hogan's leg drop or Owen's enziguri? Have these been banned as well?

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It's true that WWE does limit some moves for different reasons. The more obvious reason is safety as there are some moves in which the potential risk a move has on someone far outweighs the wow factor.

The WWE does pay far more attention to safety than they used to and part of that reason is because it's just good business. All wrestlers work hurt and some even work injured but it makes perfect sense to want to have the wrestlers be as healthy as they can be. Another reason is because WWE sort of has to. It could be viewed as a negative byproduct of being the biggest wrestling company in the world. Look at the negative press WWE got because of Chris Benoit for not taking enough precautions with wrestler safety and the dangers of drugs and all that. There was even talk, for a while, that Congress might be stepping in and regulating WWE, so WWE has to straighten its act up. ROH and other indy promotions don't even register as a blip on the radar and can certainly get away with more.

A big downside to the IWC, one among many, is that there's this prevailing belief that wrestling matches have to be filled with tons of high spots in order to be entertaining. For me and a lot of others, spot fests are entertaining in the moment but are almost universally forgettable once they're over. There's so much packed into a match that you can't even follow the action or remember what took place 5 minutes after the match is over. The WWE doesn't have a lot of spot fest matches and that's more than fine with me. I like matches that tell stories. I like seeing wrestlers sell the effects of a wrestling move rather than taking the move, grimacing for 2 seconds and then moves to the next spot. It's pure indy mentality to believe that wrestling needs tons upon tons of flips & flops to be entertaining. Even TNA has dramatically cut back on the spot fest matches. Even most X Division matches these days aren't the mindless spot fests that they used to be.

Not every wrestler in WWE uses flashy offense or spots. Some of them do and, to me, it feels more special whenever they do them because of that. It's fun seeing Evan Bourne do a Shooting Star Press or Justin Gabriel doing a 450 Splash. It's fun seeing John Morrison do all his Parkour stuff and incorporate that into his moves. It's fun seeing Daniel Bryan do that big missle dropkick off the top rope. When you have every guy in an organization doing big spots, it takes away from those moves being special. For instance, TNA has been called a gimmick match killer as they've rendered most gimmick matches they show on tv as irrelevant. How often have they had 5 minute street fights or 5 minute ladder matches on IW? Those matches are supposed to feel special when you have them on television. How special would Rey Mysterio's 619 feel if John Cena, CM Punk, Sin Cara & Daniel Bryan all used the same move as part of their offense?

 

[Wade's Public Transit Bomb]

Duh. It's for safety, ability and booking reasons.


I know a lot of people kill The Wasteland as a finisher, but when you look at the roster up and down, it is one of the most dangerous moves. Every time Wade hits it, I can't help but think how incredible it is that he hasn't seriously hit someone off it yet. Well, there was that one incident with Cena being hurt in a match with Wade, but it was never really confirmed that The Wasteland had fault in it. p) Imagine having a whole roster that did moves like that.. With that WWE schedule? Bitch plz.


Not everyone has the actual agility to pull off a 45807 degree flip or strength to control if someone gets dropped on their hit or not. We've seen how terrible some of the divas have looked when they try to go all indy (looking at you Eve and Melina). Heck, Botchamania videos are filled with indy morons who do shit that looks like shit just for the sake of doing said shit. When the WWE proudly talks about the athleticism and how well trained their folks are, doing stuff that visually looks awful is counterproductive in every sense. It still blows my mind that some people use that '[name] only does [#] of moves' as a criticism.


But I think the biggest reason the WWE scales back on moves is booking. There are six people on Raw and SD that have top rope finishers. Kofi and his shitty crossbodys; Evan and his SSP; Justin Gabriel and his 'sternum crushing' 450 splash; Eve and her moonsault; and whatever you call that shit the Sin Caras do. How big is the roster again? 80 people? If everyone of those 80 people (who knows if that is the real number) did a top rope finisher, the crow would be dead by the main event. And if group of fans knows about being gassed by the matches that have actual meaning, it would be the people who want flips and shit.

Also, you got that little hurdle of 'different characters' to get over. There might be an overwhelming feeling of some guys being interchangeable, but they all have their own style. Mark Henry is dubbed The World's Strongest Man. He is supposed to only do power moves. What good would it do anyone much smaller/faster if he tried to pull hurricaranas or flips out of his ass? What would be the appeal of a Evan Bourne or Sin Cara if he did that?

 

[Foshinzo]

Isn't this the reason that nobody uses the Piledriver, anymore? That move has actually been banned, right? It's barely even on the new WWE games. It was only on it last year because Bret Hart was a character, I think. I miss that move. It made for good stories where the heel would break the hero's neck, only for him to come back from the injury and get justice. It's a classic story, all made possible by one move.