Bryan Danielson has used the Cattle Mutilation for a number of years. He has won multiple matches in AEW using the move and has made it one of the most fearsome moves in all of wrestling.
To execute the move, Danielson stands over a prone opponent’s back and tucks the opponent’s arms under their armpits. From this point, the wrestler then rolls or flips into a bridge, pulling the opponent’s arms and applying pressure on them.
This creates huge torque on the victim’s shoulders and usually ends in the opponent tapping out and losing the match.
Bryan Danielson’s Cattle Mutilation
Bryan Danielson has used the Cattle Mutilation for a number of years. Even before he was signed to the WWE in 2010, he was using it as a finishing move in his work on the independent scene.
When he came to the WWE, the move was somewhat put on the back burner. Instead, Danielson (under the name Daniel Bryan) adopted the LaBelle Lock as his signature move, later renaming it the Yes Lock and No Lock.
However, he did use the Cattle Mutilation a few times in the WWE. The first time Bryan Danielson used it was at Hell in a Cell 2010, in a match with The Miz and John Morrison.
Near the end of the match, he locked in the arms and bridged his shoulders over The Miz, locking in the Cattle Mutilation. Matt Striker called the move on commentary, much to the derision of his fellow commentators.
The way Bryan Danielson came to use the move is an interesting story.
One day whilst wrestling on the indies, Bryan Danielson saw somebody using a bridging double chicken wing move.
He decided then and there that he would take the move and use it as his finisher. He was very successful, winning multiple titles, including the ROH Championship using the bridging double chicken wing.
He also called it as such, much to the shock of everybody. Danielson called the move the bridging double chicken wing, using its technical name rather than giving it its own name.
The American Dragon continued doing this for a significant period of time. Unbeknownst to him, he had been calling the move the wrong name this entire time.
It took another indie legend to put him straight. A star of the early 2000s on the independent scene, Reckless Youth, broke the news to Bryan Danielson about the Cattle Mutilation name.
He informed Danielson that the move had been used for years and was called by almost everybody “The Cattle Mutilation”. Danielson had simply been naΓ―ve and didn’t know about the history of the move.
In fact, the Cattle Mutilation had been used for a number of years. The Great Muta even used the move in WCW in the 1990s, a full decade before Bryan Danielson adopted the Cattle Mutilation.
Where Does The Name Come From?
The Cattle Mutilation move was popularised in the United States by The Great Muta in the 1990s. However, he did not coin the name for the move.
Instead, Japanese wrestler Atsuo Sawada was the first man to name the move the Cattle Mutilation, although it was a variation of the version used by Bryan Danielson.
Also known as Poison Sawada Julie, Sawada is credited with naming the Cattle Mutilation. His version of the move saw the victim seated, rather than lying flat on their face.
This version of the move predates Bryan Danielson’s cattle mutilation by some decades, although the name of the move is now used for both versions.
The actual term “Cattle Mutilation” comes from the 1600s. It explains the mutilation of certain animals in an unexpected and unexplained manner.
It was a relatively unknown practice until 1967, when a terrible crime was committed in Colorado (unrelated to pro-wrestling).
On September 9, 1967, Agnes King and her son Harry reportedly found the dead body of their three-year-old horse.
The horse’s head and neck had been skinned and defleshed, and the body displayed cuts that, to King, looked very precise. No blood was at the scene, according to Harry, and a strong medicinal odor was in the air.
This was one of the first times that aliens had been theorised to be responsible. This added more mythology to the name and made it perfect to name Bryan Danielson’s wrestling move.
Hilariously, Bryan Danielson didn’t even know the move was called Cattle Mutilation by the time he had adopted it.