Is this true about where the term "running the pipe" came from?

I’ve heard it used heaps and often wondered where it came from. Here is an explanation from reddit. Also an explanation of the term “whizzer”.

"It comes from the railroad. Workers would run pipe down a line. They did this in a line fashion, where one guy would straddle the line, and run it backwards between his legs to the next guy down the line. Its way more efficient than carrying it. Now, look at what the wrestling technique of running the pipe is. Its exactly the same.

Whizzer also comes from the railroad. In wrestling, its an overhook to counter a single. When they were building the rails, the cars had to take the workers to the end of the line where they would keep building. The cars didnt have bathrooms, only a rail on the outside. Guys who needed to piss would overhook the rail and take a piss. Whizzing is slang for pissing. The rail was called a Whizzer rail. After that, overhooking to stop a single looked and felt very similar to holding the whizzer rail."

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“Jap Whizzer” was a great one when I was a kid. Now it’s a “Spinning arm throw”.

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A lot of people still call it that.

I just say seoi nage. Jap whizzer was originally meant to give credit to the judoka who brought the throw to the technique to the West

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Ha! That’s called a flying mare and it’s in every medieval fight book. They called it a jap whizzer because the jiudoka would try in vain to land it

The story about running the pipe is what I learned. It rings true; that’s how anyone runs a long pipe in plumbing, it’s not just on railroads.

The story about the whizzer… I don’t know, but it sounds kinda spurious to me. Wrestling techniques are generally named after things that are easy to understand and familiar to a lot of people --at least at the time the move was named. I don’t think the Whizzer pipe story fits that bill.

My wrestling coach said it was called the whizzer because it makes the guy go whizzing by, right in front of you. But, I don’t know for sure.

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