#4 The Roll-Up is the most powerful finisher in the WWE
Quick, name the one wrestling move that everyone’s afraid of. No, it’s neither the F-5, nor the Tombstone, nor the AA, or even the Rear View. It’s the dreaded Roll-up, the one move that can pin even the toughest of wrestlers.
We’ve seen it a thousand times in the past year. Wrestler A will be getting close to victory. Suddenly, there will be some cheap action, such as another wrestler’s music playing, someone getting up on the ring apron or some other screwy booking decision.
Then Wrestler B will hook Wrestler A’s leg and roll them up for a successful pin.
I am not a trained wrestler, and if you’re reading this, odds are that neither are you. But I’m fairly confident that if someone tried to roll-up either one of us like they do with this move, both of us would break out of that move and be back on our feet long before three seconds go by.
The dreaded Roll-up makes everyone involved look horribly weak. It makes the wrestler receiving the move look both incredibly frail for being felled by such a simplistic and painless-looking move and incredibly stupid for being so easily distracted as to be caught off guard for three full seconds by something happening outside of the match.
It makes the wrestler using the move look weak by having to end the match with something so boring instead of their actual finisher. And it makes the writers of such a match look inept by suggesting that they cannot come up with anything more creative than ‘victory by roll-up due to interference’.
If you’re wondering why so many wrestlers aren’t gaining any further momentum, you can thank this illogical and boring match finish that seems to permeate WWE’s creative department constantly.