What It Means When Wrestlers Point With Horns

Pro wrestling may be about the matches, the promos, the storylines, occasionally the weird signals and secret language talent, producers, promoters, and others use, and again the matches. But in many ways, it's also about the taunts, poses, and the works, as anyone that has played a wrestling video game at least once in their life can attest to. Sure, many wrestlers can get by without stuff like that, but for others, doing taunts, poses, hand signals or whatever was vital. Who is Randy Orton without slowly extending his arms to pose for the fans before a match? Who was Hulk Hogan if he wasn't holding his ear out for the fans to cheer, followed by him doing his bodybuilding pose routine? Sometimes, things like that are part of the magic.

But there's been one hand signal over the years that stands out above the rest, one that has been helpful to many pro wrestlers over their careers, and was influential in the rise of two of the greatest stables pro wrestling has ever seen. Naturally, it's a take off of one of the most identifiable hand signals in modern life. Unless you live under a rock, you're well familiar with the "horns" hand signal. For years, it has been used as a signal for fans of the Texas Longhorns, or the sign that you wanted to rock on and rock hard while listening to very loud music. And then, along the way, a group of wrestlers decided to add their own spin on it, holding up the horns, while also pointing forward with their thumb, ring, and middle fingers. Lo and behold, the "Too Sweet" hand gesture was born.

Ironically enough, the "Too Sweet," as most people call it, appears to have been created with little intention of it turning into something used onscreen. Originally, the hand signal was a secret handshake of sorts, used by Kevin Nash (who has referred to the signal as the Turkish Wolf), Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H during their Kliq days. Things changed when Nash, Hall, and eventually Waltman all jumped to WCW in 1996 and became members of the nWo stable. It wasn't instantaneous, but as time went on, the "Too Sweet" became the official hand signal of the nWo, used by everyone from the aforementioned Hulk Hogan all the way to Eric Bischoff, and became known as the "Too Sweet" thanks to the often used phrase "the nWo is just too sweet" by Hogan and others.

The "Too Sweet" remained popular all throughout the nWo's run, and even became a signature of the spin-off nWo Wolfpac stable, before largely fading off from wrestling for many years, perhaps to be considered a relic of the 90s. It stormed back, however, in the 2010s, following the formation of the New Japan Pro Wrestling stable Bullet Club. The group took many cues from the nWo, but most notably did so by using the "Too Sweet" gesture, something founding members Karl Anderson and future WWE star Finn Balor had been doing off camera for years anyway. The hand gesture has remained a staple of Bullet Club years later, and almost got the group and New Japan in trouble, when WWE filed a trademark for the hand gesture in 2015, and later sent a cease and desist to the group after they invaded "WWE Raw" in Ontario, California in 2017. Ultimately, however, WWE abandoned the trademark some time later.