As most people who read this or know me at all understand, I am an aficionado of Professional Wrestling. Have been since I was about 10 years old and it has been well documented on this site many many times.
One thing I've noticed over the years is that the abdominal stretch has pretty much become obsolete as a finishing move, if it's ever used in a match at all. I have a fondness for the abdominal stretch as when I was an amateur wrestler myself, I used to use a variation of it called the Guillotine that was pretty much the same move, except you performed it on the mat instead of standing up.
Side note: Yes, I used to wrestle in high school and it was one of the most horrific periods of my life. At 16 you're not feeling so great about yourself as it is, never mind having to go out in front of a gym full of people wearing a skin tight singlet and rolling around on a staph infected mat with a dude possessing more "back-ne" than I ever had on my face. That doesn't even take into account the starving myself for a week just to get down to the weight class to have the privilege of said match. I hated it. But, I digress...
After close examination and studies the world over (OK, me and my friend Rich talked about it over Christmas for about 15 minutes over a pizza) I believe I have stumbled upon the reason for the castration of this once proud and noble move....
No one ever hooks the foot the anymore. They all just drape the front foot over the opponent's leg and let it hang there. Of course you're going to have the move reversed on you and get hip-tossed out of it! Here I have painstakingly created a comparison of hooked and not hooked. In the first we see it properly applied. In the second, the dude is looking to get beat and if you look really closely you can see the disgust in all seven onlookers' faces at the application of the hold.
Correct
Not only is the move much more effective in the first picture but the second application of said move also seems to have turned the fans away in droves. Let that be a lesson...a properly applied abdominal stretch puts asses in the seats!
If I was ever a pro wrestler, and admittedly that window has long since come and gone, I would use the abdominal stretch and hook the foot, bringing the move back to it's former glory.
Actually, that's not true. I would be called The Architect and my finishing move would be called The Flying Buttress.
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