who invented the chokeslam

The chokeslam doesn’t have a single, clear “official” inventor, but there are two main answers people talk about most often:

• In pro wrestling history, the move is often credited to early 1990s big men like Sid Vicious and All Japan’s Akira Taue, who were using a chokeslam-style move before it became famous in ECW and WWE.

• A popular modern rumor/story claims that Abraham Lincoln hit an early version of a chokeslam in an 1830s wrestling match, so some articles dramatically say he “invented” it, but this is more legend than a formally documented wrestling move invention.

So if you’re asking in the strict pro-wrestling sense: it’s usually attributed to Sid Vicious and Akira Taue (early 1990s), not Paul Heyman or 911, even though many fans still repeat that later ECW origin story.