Samoa Joe isn’t buying one of professional wrestling’s longest-running unwritten rules as an absolute truth. The AEW star says the idea that every wrestler must fiercely protect their finishing move doesn’t hold up when you look at how many successful wrestlers have done things completely differently.
During an interview with SHAK Wrestling, Joe was given a series of wrestling hot takes and unwritten rules and asked to give his opinion on them. One of those involved protecting a wrestler’s finisher. The old-school philosophy is pretty straightforward: if too many opponents kick out of your finishing move, the move eventually stops feeling like something that can actually finish a match.
Joe wasn’t willing to make it that simple. Instead, Joe said the answer depends entirely on the performer because wrestling history gives plenty of examples on both sides. Some stars protected their finishing moves and got everything possible out of them, while others allowed plenty of kickouts and still became major stars.
“You know, once again, I feel it is circumstantial on the performer because I’ve seen successful performers who have absolutely protected their finisher and have maximized its utility to the best of their ability. And I’ve seen other ones who’ve been wildly successful and haven’t.”
That’s why Joe believes declaring that every wrestler must protect a finishing move is taking an unnecessarily rigid position on something where the evidence isn’t nearly that clear. Joe said he would rather look at the actual results and compare how many performers succeeded using both philosophies.
“So I think taking a hard stance on that is pretty silly because if you look, if I mean, listen, if we’re going to look at this scientifically and like, ‘Oh, what are your thoughts?’ I look at it scientifically. I mean, how many guys got over with their finisher being protected? How many guys got over with their finisher not being protected? And I’m sure the numbers will speak for themselves. I mean, really it’s in the data.”
Joe knows plenty about having recognizable finishing moves himself. The Muscle Buster has followed him through multiple companies and remains one of the moves most closely associated with his career. He used the move when he returned to action on AEW Dynamite in April 2026, putting Cody Chhun away with it. The Muscle Buster has also delivered on much bigger stages. Joe used it to win the AEW World Championship at Full Gear 2025 after hitting Hangman Page with the move inside the steel cage.
That makes Joe’s position even more interesting. He isn’t arguing that protecting a finishing move has no value. He’s saying there simply isn’t one formula that every wrestler needs to follow, especially when decades of wrestling have produced successful stars using completely different approaches.
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