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 their head. Although widely credited as an invention of Jake Roberts, who gave the DDT its famous name, the earliest known practitioner of the move was Mexican wrestler Black Gordman, who frequently performed it during the 1970s before Roberts popularized it nationwide.

Rumors abound as to what the letters DDT supposedly stood for, including Damien's Death Trap, Damien's Death Touch, Damien's Dinner Time (all named after Jake's pet python, Damien) Double Diarrhea Tightrope, Drape Drop Takedown, Drop Down Town, Downward Dome Thrust, and Death Drop Technique. When asked what DDT meant, Jake once famously replied "The End." The abbreviation itself originally came from the chemical dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, a notorious pesticide, as stated during shoot interviews and Jake's Pick Your Poison DVD.