AEW's Christian Cage Recalls Origins Of Killswitch Finishing Move

AEW star Christian Cage has discussed how he got the idea of his finisher, The Killswitch, revealing that he took inspiration from a late American wrestler who had a similar move.

Cage was a recent guest at Steel City Con where he was asked about his deadly Killswitch finisher. The former AEW TNT Champion stated that he studied a variety of wrestling while growing up, and watched the late Tommy Rogers perform his Tomikaze in Japan, leading him to create his own variation, which later went by the name The Killswitch.

"I used to study a lot of different genres of wrestling, one of those being Japanese wrestling, and there was an American wrestler there by the name of Tommy Rogers. Tommy Rogers used to do a move called Tomikaze, which is a version of the Killswitch. He did it a little bit different than I do," said the veteran star. "When I saw him do it, it was ... when he hooked the guy's arms from behind and spun him around, first of all, I couldn't figure out how he did that, so I had to slow it down. This was at times of VCRs, so I had to slow it down on a VCR and push pause multiple times to see it frame by frame to see how he turned the guy. When I saw how he turned the guy and the head was in the position facing down, I was like, 'Okay, it's almost like a piledriver move, it can be devastating.'"

While Rogers ran a few steps to perform the move, Cage thought that it'd be deadlier if he planted his opponent straight on their head. He further added that the finisher has worked very well for him over the years. Cage first used the finisher during his time in WWE, and it went by other names like The Impaler and The Unprettier, before rebranding it as The Killswitch.