Wrestling Move of the Week: Victoria Driver

Kenta Kobashi, milliseconds away from drilling Mitsuharu Misawa with the Burning Hammer.

Move Name: Victoria Driver

Created/innovated by: Kyoko Inuoe

Notable users of move: Kenta Kobashi, LuFisto, Michael Elgin, Chris Dickinson, Dan Maff, Brian Kendrick

Notable variations of the move: Wrist-Clutch Burning Hammer (Inverted Death Valley Driver, with an opponent’s exposed arm trapped) - Kenta Kobashi; Cut-Throat Burning Hammer (Inverted Death Valley Driver with opponent’s free arm used to make opponent crossface themselves) - Jay Briscoe

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You know how in fighting game franchises like Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, the King of Fighters, and things of that ilk, where the fighters each have a primary finishing maneuver? And how when they want to finish the fight definitively they resort to their ultimate finishing maneuver, the one move that no one gets up from that pretty much always equals ‘game over’?

The real-life pro wrestling equivalent of that is the Victoria Driver.

The Victoria Driver was created by Joshi wrestling (the name for women’s professional wrestling in Japan) legend Kyoko Inuoe. Kyoko had a brutal arsenal of maneuvers that she utilized to weaken her opponents and drill their head into the canvas. Still, the finishing move she created and dubbed the Victoria Driver was the most devastating in her bag of dangerous tricks. The Victoria Driver is somewhat simple in concept but life-threatening in execution in a way very few professional wrestling maneuvers are. It starts as what appears to be the setup for an Argentine backbreaker rack, a submission maneuver that focuses on stretching and jarring a person’s neck and back across your shoulders until they submit or quit. Once the attacking wrestler has their opponent cinched into the Argentine Backbreaker rack, the attacking wrestler then falls sideways, driving their opponent's head and neck into the mat.

As you can see in the clip above, you do not pop up and “walk it off” if you get drilled with that!

Kyoko created this move as a variation of the Death Valley Driver, which is a fireman’s carry transitioned into a head and neck drop:

By inverting the position of the opponent during the setup of the maneuver, Kyoko created a move that, unlike the Death Valley Driver, gives the person on the receiving end of the move little to no safety net for trying to stop their rapid descent onto their head and neck. It is supremely dangerous and, when Kyoko was using the move as her primary finisher, was very rarely kicked out of. But the Victoria Driver was still her primary finisher; it wasn’t a level three super if you will (Street Fighter fans know what I meant by the last reference). It wasn’t the ‘last resort.’

Enter Kenta Kobashi.

Kenta Kobashi is a professional wrestling legend. Not just a Puroresu (Japanese pro wrestling) legend but a bonafide pro wrestling legend. You might recall me speaking of Mr. Kobashi briefly when we talked about Lariats a few columns ago (you can check out the Lariat write-up here). Kenta Kobashi was one of the most physical competitors in professional wrestling history, possessing unbridled power coupled with technique and vicious knife-edge chops. He had a variety of moves to finish his opponents with the Orange Crush (a vertical suplex thrown into a sit-out powerbomb):

The Burning Lariat (a standing strong lariat executed while holding an opponent’s head to keep them in place):

And even the occasional Moonsault Press (a top-rope backflip into a splash on a prone opponent).

As Kobashi’s style evolved and his strength and power increased, so did the strength, energy, and resiliency of his opponents. Kenta realized he needed something in his repertoire that, if all of his other devastating maneuvers couldn’t seal the deal in high stakes contests, would make sure that his opponent would finally stay down on the canvas for a three count or longer.

That’s when Kobashi added the Victoria Driver to his arsenal, which he dubbed the Burning Hammer.

He debuted his adoption of Victoria Driver quietly enough. During a fall 1999 match against fellow professional wrestling legend Mitsuharu Misawa, a man who was his greatest rival, Kobashi finished the contest with the newest addition to his arsenal after nailing Misawa with every hard-hitting maneuver in his toolbox:

No one saw it coming. The fans, the commentators, no one. It came out of left field. It came off as the pro wrestling equivalent of a Mortal Kombat fatality, which was accurate as this move could legitimately paralyze or kill someone. News soon spread about the Burning Hammer, making it the thing of legends and elevating its status to one of the most visibly awe-inspiring maneuvers in professional wrestling history. And the move rightfully should be seen as dangerous and awe-inspiring; Kyoko Inoue made a maneuver that checks all of the high-risk boxes that so many pro wrestling fans gobble up. But while Kyoko’s original version of the Victoria Driver was a devastating maneuver, there was something about the elevation and power that Kobashi added to the move that added an extra layer of danger for the recipient. If you noticed how Kobashi nailed the Burning Hammer, you’d see that he almost tosses his opponents into a vertical position, allowing gravity to leave them in a genuinely precarious position. Kyoko’s Victoria Driver dropped opponents on their neck and shoulders. Kenta’s Burning Hammer? Top of the head. That means neck and spine compression with added forced velocity that could end someone’s career and hinder their ability to live a full life. The Victoria Driver is dangerous as hell - and somehow, Kenta Kobashi’s intangibles made it even more so.

The risk factor was multiplied by five once Kobashi added the move to his repertoire. Kobashi knew this because he only used the Burning Hammer seven times. You read that right. Seven times. The Burning Hammer was a part of his repertoire for over fifteen years, and he only deemed it necessary to use on an opponent on seven separate occasions. It indeed was his version of the when all else fails final maneuver that you see in video games, anime, and manga. And because he treated the Burning Hammer as such, it ended up becoming a symbol of the strength and resiliency of his foes and got them over as much as it got him over. Kobashi even created a variation of the Burning Hammer with a wrist clutch, adding even less of a window of opportunity for his opponents to protect their necks.

There have been a couple of handfuls of professional wrestlers whom have used the Victoria Driver, or some version of it, as their primary maneuver. Some of them, like LuFisto…

…nail the maneuver with the level of danger that the move was intended to deliver. And others, like Trent Seven?

They deliver much safer versions of the Victoria Driver that do not evoke the same level of awe. Either way, the Victoria Driver can be a crowd pleaser and went viral throughout the pro wrestling world due to one wrestler deciding to treat the maneuver like a special move from a video game.

I hope Kyoko is proud of what she created and how huge it rightfully became.