The World’s Most Devastating Pro Wrestling Moves: Belly-To-Back Inverted Mat Slam

Move type: Takedown

Notable users: AJ Styles, Michelle McCool

The Belly-To-Back Inverted Mat Slam—known as the “Styles Clash” when used by AJ Styles and the “Faith Breaker” when used by Michelle McCool—is one of pro wrestling’s most unusual and successful finishing moves.

In the video above, you can see Styles confidently take his time to set up and execute this move on John Cena, who had just been weakened by a beatdown from The Club. Styles starts with his opponent bent forward with his head against his midsection. The applying wrestler grabs his opponent around the waist and lifts him so that his opponent is upside down, facing away from his attacker. Then the attacker steps forward to move his legs in front of his opponent’s arms and falls or jumps forward to slam the opponent’s body face-first to the mat.

This is when the arm-hooking pays off because now that the facebuster part of the move has been executed, the attacking wrestler’s legs are already holding his opponent’s shoulders down for a pin. This saves the attacking wrestler valuable seconds between hitting his or her finisher and making the pin. The combination of the high impact nature of this takedown with how it shaves off seconds that make or break a match result is what makes the Belly-To-Back Inverted Mat Slam such an effective finisher.

While Styles made this move famous, Michelle McCool adopted it, gave it a name referencing her Christian faith (the “Faith Breaker”), and used it to go far in the WWE’s Divas division. In the video above, you can see McCool counter her opponent Kelly Kelly’s offense into the Faith Breaker, to pick up a smooth W on SmackDown.