DDT (professional wrestling)

In professional wrestling a DDT is any move in which the wrestler has the opponent in a front facelock/inverted headlock, and falls down or backwards to drive the opponent's head into the mat. The classic DDT is performed by putting the opponent in a front facelock and falling backwards so that the opponent is forced to dive forward onto his or her head. Although widely credited as an invention of Jake Roberts, who gave the DDT its famous name, the earliest known practitioner of the move was Mexican wrestler Black Gordman, who frequently performed it during the 1970s.

Rumors abound as to what the letters DDT supposedly stood for, including Drape Drop Takedown, Drop Dead Twice, Definitely Dead Tomorrow, Demonic Death Trap, Drop Down Town, Death Drop Technique and Damien's Dinner Time or Damien's Death Touch (the latter two named after Jake's pet python Damien). When asked what DDT meant, Jake once famously replied "The End." The abbreviation itself originally came from the chemical dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, a notorious pesticide, as stated during shoot interviews and Jake's Pick Your Poison DVD. Many think that the term DDT was applied because the chemical DDT is a hazardous chemical buried in the ground which potentially causes brain damage.

The wrestler lifts the opponent onto his shoulders as in an Argentine backbreaker rack, pushes the opponent's legs while still holding the front facelock, flipping them over to the front of the wrestler. The wrestler falls down to the mat front first, driving the opponent face first down to the mat.

The wrestler applies a front facelock to the opponent, then lifts the opponent into an elevated leg-trap bodyscissors position and finally fall backwards driving the opponent head first down to the mat. WWE wrestler Paige uses this variation as a finishing move called the Ram-Paige. A variation, known as a hammerlock cradle DDT, involves the attacking wrestler lifting the opponent into a bearhug, applying a hammerlock, then a front facelock, then finally driving the opponent's head into the mat. British wrestler Joseph Conners uses this variation, known as the Righteous Kill.

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