Scott's Mailbag
Rants

Kicking Out At One

By Scott Keith on 2 August 2024

Hiya, Scott! You've probably happened to notice the increasing number of uses of the “guy kicking out of a huge move at ONE” spots over the past year or so. Ospreay/Omega had it, Hook kicked out of Joe's Muscle Buster like that, and just recently Lance Archer
of all people used it against Ospreay's Hidden Blade.

I fear that using this spot, especially in meaningless TV matches, is another case of dumb wrestlers seeing something get a pop and figure it should be used on the regular. Wrestlers kinda get greedy for pops, and this sort of thing tends to excite the lot
of them, who see the pop (or presumed credibility boost) someone gets for kicking out of a finisher at one and goes “well I want that pop, too!” and try it themselves. And of course the more it's used we get diminishing returns. It's the “move on the apron”
all over again, where guys would get good reactions for hitting a move on the hardest part of the ring, and now we see it every single Dynamite, often two or three times, and now nobody thinks those moves are even finisher-adjacent anymore.

So bold statement: We're going to be seeing a lot more of this, and then in a year a lot of wrestlers will be mystified at “why didn't that get a good reaction?” or wondering why their finishers aren't over anymore.

Also any wrestler who lets someone kick out of their finisher at one is a doofus. They should protect their damn moves! Ospreay in particular has let nearly everyone kick out of his Hidden Blade so many times its already lost all credibility!



The one that really drives me nuts (pardon the pun) is the low blow. That used to be the murder-death-kill finish to end all finishes and now it's a cheap heat spot, sometimes even when the ref is looking right at it. I think they'll get the one count stuff out of their system soon enough, but I'm worried that hitting people in the junk has gotten so watered down that it's essentially meaningless now and it's more of a comedy spot than anything. It's not even a recent problem, as Russo and everyone in his orbit over-used it as a spot to the point of killing it even in the late 90s.