The World’s Most Devastating Pro Wrestling Moves: Gory Neckbreaker

Move type: Throw

Notable users: Victoria

The Gory Neckbreaker—or elevated shoulder neckbreaker—is a high- impact finishing move. Dubbed the “Widow’s Peak” by Victoria, she used the maneuver to pick up championships in WWE, as well as later in her career in other promotions.

The Widow’s Peak starts with the applying wrestler lifting their opponent into a Gory Special—a back-to-back backbreaker submission hold.

The Gory Special, invented by legendary lucha libre pioneer and patriarch of the Guerrero wrestling family Gory Guerrero, can be extremely painful and a finisher in its own right. It sees the attacking wrestler, while back-to-back with their opponent, hook their arms under those of their opponent and lift them into the air with their legs hooked around their attacker’s waist.

To turn this into a neckbreaker, the attacking wrestler drops to a seated position, driving the back of their opponent’s neck into their shoulder, and their knees to the mat. While the Gory Special usually involves the opponent’s neck positioned over their attacker’s shoulder, you can see that Victoria sets up her finisher with her opponent’s neck over her head, with the extra elevation increasing the amount of damage done by the move.

Though Victoria is definitely the wrestler most associated with the Gory Neckbreaker—to the point where most wrestling fans would probably just call it the “Widow’s Peak”—Eddie Guerrero and Matt Hardy, among others, did spinning variations of the move. Peyton Royce also used it during her time in NXT, including during a Women’s Championship match against Asuka.