10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2018

Honourable mentions are vast across what was the most critically acclaimed year in wrestling history.

Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch, at Evolution, made something tangible and real from the manufactured and inaccurate hype surrounding the "first ever" all-women's pay-per-view: they fought a seminal war incredible in both anguish and animosity. Charlotte wrestled a similarly realistic but totally different match, against Ronda Rousey, at Survivor Series. Grappling in November as well as she brawled in October, maybe the post-match reaction wasn't a rejection of Ronda. Maybe the LA crowd realised that, at this rate, Charlotte is almost as close to her father's legacy as WWE insists.

Will Ospreay sold his neck, as if it was hanging off, in awesome matches across three continents. Minoru Suzuki, WALTER, Seth Rollins, KUSHIDA, AJ Styles, Pete Dunne, Ricochet, the Young Bucks: we're sorry.

For variety's sake, we've selected only two matches from New Japan's awesome G1 Climax tournament, and we have omitted also the final of the company's other awesome tournament. Scratch that; we just forgot about the New Japan Cup. Jesus Christ, what a year this was - a year so good we don't have room to include Hiromu Takahashi's BOSJ Final win over Taiji Ishimori, in which the Time Bomb bumped down a flight of stairs to generate the support of the Korakuen Hall faithful and their reverence towards the never-say-die attitude. In its place, we selected a match that better crafted the illusion of danger.

This thing, after all, is a work...

Comfortably the greatest debut performance of all time, Ronda Rousey's first ever wrestling match was among the best of arguably the greatest ever year for the in-ring component of the craft.

That is some praise, but then, this was some bloody match.

Great wrestling matches telegraph something in the wider build, provide it after obscuring it, and then deliver something you didn't know you wanted even more. Stephanie McMahon, who comes in for much, deserved criticism on this site, performed incredibly here. Using her entitled, irritating 1% smugness as a platform for actual comeuppance, she was especially irritating on the night. Doing everything possible to avoid Rousey, but at the same time carrying herself as she didn't need to, this was the very best version of a performer who would be outstanding, if her ego did not get in the way.

It did not get in the way here.

When Ronda eventually stepped through those ropes - after great chickensh*t work from Steph and unheralded, earnest toil from Kurt Angle - she lit up the Superdome with the intensity of a legit combat athlete and the timing and instincts of a pro wrestling prodigy. We expected a genius, smoke-and-mirrors layout to obscure Ronda's inexperience. We got that and an unexpectedly outstanding match in itself, one that reached an amazing crescendo as Ronda pulverised Triple H in a rare, organic 'WrestleMania Moment'.

Inspiringly, Ronda is a Triple H 'Guy'. Possibly not a ***** match per se, this was a ******* spectacle that proved Trips' WWE, in its own, different way, may one day become something as incredible as his NXT.

This is what WWE talks about when WWE talks about sports entertainment.