Piledriver (professional wrestling)

A piledriver is a professional wrestling driver move in which the wrestler grabs his opponent, turns him upside-down, and drops into a sitting or kneeling position, driving the opponent head-first into the mat. The technique is said to have been innovated by Wild Bill Longson.

The name is taken from a piece of construction equipment, also called a pile driver, that drives countless massive impacts on the top of a large major foundation support, burying it in the ground slowly with each impact. The act of performing a piledriver is called "piledriving." Someone who has recently been the victim of a piledriver is said to have been "piledriven" (e.g. "The wrestler was piledriven into the canvas").

Notable wrestlers who have regularly used a piledriver during their career include Jerry Lawler, Bret Hart, Harley Race, Paul Orndorff, The Undertaker, Kane, The Brain Busters, Buddy Rogers, and Karl Gotch.

The piledriver is often seen as one of the most dangerous moves in wrestling. The reverse piledriver is directly responsible for shortening the career of WWE Superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin when his opponent, Owen Hart, inadvertently botched the move, legitimately injuring Austin's neck. Due to this, the move is banned in WWE with the exception of Kane and The Undertaker due to their experience and size.

The piledriver is generally considered a dangerous maneuver in wrestling because of the potential impact on the head and compression of the neck. The proper way to execute the move, in most cases, is for the wrestler performing the move to tuck the opponent's head between his legs before falling to the mat (there are variations that are performed differently, as the list below indicates). If done in this manner, the wrestler receiving the move will land with little or no contact made with the mat at all and thus not run the risk of injury. If the head is not secured and is protruding from between the wrestler's legs, the wrestler receiving the move risks serious injury and potential paralysis as he will likely land with the entire weight of his body on the crown of his head. Perhaps the most famous example of an injury from an improperly performed piledriver came at the 1997 WWF SummerSlam event. In a match between Owen Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hart was to perform a seated reverse piledriver on Austin, who later said that he was not sure if the move was a good idea to perform as he was unsure if his head could properly be protected. As Austin had feared, Hart botched the move and dropped Austin on top of his head. The impact jammed Austin's neck and left him temporarily paralyzed. He continued and finished the match, but stayed away from the ring for two months to recover from the injury. The physical demands of Austin's standing as one of the top stars in the WWF did not allow much downtime for him to rest and take care of the injury and as his career progressed, the damage got worse. Austin underwent surgery on the neck in 1999, but it never fully healed. By 2002, Austin's doctors told him that he risked permanent disability if he did not retire, and he finally did so in April 2003.

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