MOVES
INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION
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INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION
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In the summer of 1987, The Road Warriors would add an iconic move to their arsenal, one that struck legitimate fear into their opponents:
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"During another trip back to Japan in early June, after watching a match with The British Bulldogs, I was inspired to develop a new finisher to captivate audiences. Davey Boy Smith and Dynamite Kid were one of the most innovative and exciting teams I'd ever seen, and one spot Dynamite did in particular caught my attention.
The move was called The electric chair drop, which involved Dynamite bending over and scooping an opponent onto his shoulders in an upright seated position, as if to give him a piggyback ride. From there, Dynamite pushed backward as hard as he could, giving his opponent a back-bump from hell. Boom!
I wondered what it would be like if I put somebody up for the electric chair and Hawk clotheslined them from the top rope. Hmmmm. Only one way to find out.
A few days later we were doing TV tapings for AJPW against a couple of jobbers, and I thought we'd take my new idea for a test run. When we got to the end of the match, I told Hawk to climb to the top. I walked up behind one of our dazed opponents, stuck my head between his legs, and raised him high up on my shoulders. When I'd adjusted to the additional weight, I pivoted around to face Hawk, who launched off and clotheslined the guy with a ton of force, knocking him for a full backflip. Whoom!
The resulting carnage was incredible and perfectly Road Warrioresque. The move was like a decapitation and a graceful trapeze act all at the same time. Hawk and I knew we had a winner the second we watched it back on tape. No one was doing anything like what we had executed. The only thing we were missing was a name, which we quickly came up with: the Double Impact. But when we went back to the States, we eventually settled on a new, permanent name for our finisher: the Doomsday Device.
When we came back to the United States and used the Doomsday on our first TV taping, the guys in the back were less than thrilled. 'Oh, great,' Arn Anderson said. 'Now we got to do that? What's next, a firing squad?'
Some of the biggest and baddest that ever faced The Road Warriors found themselves 8 feet in the air before being flung to the mat.
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Both Hawk and Animal could throw an impressively high and vicious dropkick, despite their size.
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