Former AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland has revealed a surprising detail about Triple H and Shawn Michaels’s reaction to his finisher.
During his time in All Elite Wrestling, Strickland has frequently utilised the House Call or the Swerve Stomp to win matches and championships. However, during his time in WWE, not everyone was a fan of one of the moves despite the fact that it could be hit on an opponent of any size, the sign of a great finisher.
While appearing on No Contest Wrestling with O’Shea Jackson Jr. and TJ Jefferson, the former World Champion recalled struggling to hit the House Call flush on some opponents, leading to Triple H and Shawn Michaels recommending that he switch things up:
“When I first started doing (the House Call) in NXT, I would hit it, but some people would duck and it would [skims top of head]. Triple H was like, ‘Don’t use it as a finish. I like it, but don’t use it as a finish.’ Shawn (Michaels) would agree with him, ‘Yeah, it’s a not finish. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn’t.’ People are ducking from it. If you duck from it, of course I’m going to miss. You of all people, Shawn, you do a superkick. He’s like, ‘It’s not a finish.’
I struggled finding a new finish for a while in NXT. Finn came back, so I couldn’t do the Swerve Stomp. I’m a big fan of Naruki Doi. He does the Naruki Driver. Shoutout to SATs, Storm Cradle Driver is the original. I saw that and I was using it on Leon Ruff. ‘I can hit that.'”
Continuing, Strickland added that one year later he was matched up against Bronson Reed, who he would have struggled to hit the Storm Cradle Driver on. To combat this, Strickland was instructed to Michaels to once again revert back to the House Call, much to the disbelief of the AEW star:
“Bronson Reed came up and I was like ‘Ughhh, how do I do this?’ It came time to win the North American Title, this is like a year apart, Bronson is the North American Champion, Shawn is like, ‘We were coming up with creative for the finish. Can you do that kick for the finish?’ You gotta be kidding me. I had to circle a whole year of Shawn being like, ‘Now you can do what you want,'”
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H/t to Fightful.