Chris Adonis, formerly known as Chris Masters, is best known for his “Master Lock” finisher in WWE.
In a recent interview with Stephanie Chase, Adonis discussed the success of the Master Lock and why it became popular with fans. He noted that the simplicity of the hold was one of the reasons it caught on with fans, especially those in their 20s. Adonis also highlighted how he could imagine himself using the Master Lock when he was a kid because it was a legitimate hold.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On introducing the hold as his finisher: “I think it was at a point in time where it was like a back-to-basics thing, and I think a lot of people resisted at first, even including myself, because it was so basic. It’s like, ‘Oh my god, a Full Nelson?’ But the whole idea of it was to kind of recondition the fans. Not with any kind of BS or anything like that, but that holds are legitimate. The Full Nelson, for instance, is a basic hold, but it is legitimate, and if you have the right person applying it, there really is no escaping it. When I say the right person I’m talking about a Chris Masters, a Bobby Lashley, Hercules Hernandez.
“[WWE] pushed the bar very far in the three years before that. I think it was like 2002 to 2005, where there was a of ton of injuries and they reached the point, when I came in, where they adopted that philosophy and they wanted it to start, kind of, with me. It didn’t start with me but it was around then, not just with me but other people too. It’s a legitimate hold it, it just needed to be presented on television every week and you needed to see it built, and when you partner that with the fact that, it is legitimate, anybody can do it to anybody.”
On the Master Lock becoming popular with the fanbase: “I think one of the things that really made it catch on, when I’ve talked to guys who are now in their 20s, is the simplicity of it. It’s the fact that you don’t have to tie a guy down on the floor and lift up his legs and turn them over. If you’re at school like, I could imagine, if I was an eight-year-old at school and I was watching wrestling at that time at some point, I would have snuck up behind one of my friends and applied a Full Nelson out of nowhere, without them even seeing it coming, just because I saw Chris Masters do it. I think, if anything sums up its popularity, it would be, obviously the television time but then, what I just pointed out, the fact that you could do it and be like, ‘Try to break this, try to break this.’”
