In professional wrestling a DDT is any move in which the wrestler has the opponent in a front facelock/inverted headlock, and falls down or backwards to drive the opponent's head into the mat. The classic DDT is performed by putting the opponent in a front facelock and falling backwards so that the opponent is forced to dive forward onto his or her head.
The move was named by Jake "The Snake" Roberts, who accidentally invented the move in the 1980s. Rumors abound as to what the letters DDT supposedly stood for, including Drop Dead Twice, Demonic Death Trap or Damien's Death Touch, Drop Down Town, Death Drop Technique and Damien's Dinner Time after Jake's pet python Damien. When asked what DDT meant, Jake once famously replied "The End." The abbreviation itself originally came from the chemical dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, a notorious pesticide, as stated during shoot interviews and Jake's Pick Your Poison DVD. Many think that the term DDT was applied because the chemical DDT is a hazardous chemical buried in the ground which potentially causes brain damage, defects. Similarly, the DDT maneuver buries an opponent's head into the mat, and is therefore hazardous to the brain and spinal cord.