The World’s Most Devastating Pro Wrestling Moves: Argentine Backbreaker Rack

Move type: Submission, Impact

Notable users: Lex Luger, Nikki Bella

The latest Devastating Pro Wrestling Move we’re taking a closer look at here at RondaRousey.com is the Argentine Backbreaker Rack. Even if you’ve never heard it called by that name, if you’ve watched WWE (and/or WCW back in the day), you’ve seen at least one variation of it used to finish off an opponent.

You can see an early version of this maneuver used in the video above by its likely inventor, Antonino Rocca. Rocca, an Italian Argentinian pro grappler, was active from the late 1940s to mid-1970s. Others have gone on to use his creation to great effect since then.

In the 1990s, Lex Luger became the most iconic user of the submission-only version of this move, which he called the “Torture Rack.” We get a good look at him using this maneuver on the even larger Diesel  (well, before the run-in) in the video above.

You can see that the Argentine Backbreaker Rack involves the attacking wrestler lifting their opponent and placing them face-up across their shoulders. The attacking wrestler then hooks their opponent’s head with one hand and one of their legs with another and pulls down on these limbs to painfully flex their opponent’s back. When done by someone who has mastered this maneuver, it can be enough to end a match.

Nikki Bella used the Argentine Backbreaker Drop—a high-impact variation of the original submission she called the “Rack Attack”—to defeat opponents in the WWE women’s division. As you can see in this video of her 2014 RAW match against Emma, Nikki starts the Rack Attack by first moving her opponent into the Torture Rack position. She then drops to the mat in a kneeling position and releases her opponent to fall to the mat. This flexes her opponent’s back even further and adds the additional pain of the impact from the drop.

Unfortunately, Bella had to retire her memorable finisher after a neck injury. When she returned to the ring in 2016, she started using a fireman’s carry into a cutter (aka the “Rack Attack 2.0”), a somewhat similar looking move that didn’t put the same strain on that part of her body.

With the retirement of the Rack Attack, no version of the Argentinian Backbreaker Rack is currently being used as a finisher in WWE. However, variations of the move have been used recently by wrestlers in NXT and 205 Live. Roderick Strong’s version, in which he drops his opponent on his knee, is just one tool in his large arsenal of backbreakers. And Bianca Belair uses an Argentine Backbreaker Rack Facebuster as one of the many ways she devastates her opponents while showing off her impressive physical strength.