10 Awesome Wrestling Matches From 2017 (That You've Already Forgotten About)
4.5 stars in a 6.25 star age.
There is so much good wrestling in 2017. So much.
This year's G1 Climax tournament has shattered already sky-high expectations. Kenny Omega has consistently delivered to his own ludicrous standard. Ditto Tetsuya Naito. Minoru Suzuki has reprised his role as wrestling's Benjamin Button. Hiroshi Tanahashi continues to do with one arm what so many cannot do with two. Zack Sabre, Jr. is turning heads. Kota Ibushi has turned his f*ck-giving switch to ON, reminding everybody of just how phenomenal he is. Yuji Nagata, at a battered 49 years of age, is wrestling with an irresistible blend of fire and desperation with his best work in an age.
Kazuchika Okada, meanwhile, having already amassed a collection of cast iron classics in a legendary fourth IWGP Heavyweight Title reign, proved himself impervious to the rank comedic stylings of Toru Yano. Their tournament match was impossibly dramatic. This was the greatest wrestler on the planet versus a comedy act years past his punchline. And it was stupidly good. Every near fall was so unthinkable that dread begat nervous excitement begat genuine holy-sh*t-this-might-actually-happen heat.
There is so much blinding wrestling in 2017, even in the last fortnight - so much that wrestling publications and websites may need to create a new year end awards category just to capture the minor classics. These are the leading contenders for Best Matches Of Any Other Year...
10. AJ Styles Vs. Dean Ambrose - WWE SmackDown January 31
Lost in the adulation of his Match of the Year contender with John Cena three days prior and polluted by Miz’s distracting commentary is the best non-gimmicked entry into the underrated Dean Ambrose Vs. AJ Styles series.
There was no James Ellsworth on the outside, infecting a superb wrestling match with sports entertainment mugging. Baron Corbin’s squabbling with Miz at the booth requires a great deal of concentration to filter out - but succeed and you are treated to an intense war fought by two men with an awesome chemistry and an intimate awareness of one another’s repertoires. Ambrose countered Styles’ strike combination with a smooth neckbreaker before knocking him out of his boots with a teeth-rattling clothesline. Ambrose countered the Phenomenal Forearm by sending Styles into the barricade with a forearm of his own.
In response to that, Styles countered Ambrose’s suicide dive with a forearm of his own, precipitating another lightning-paced blur of reversals telling a story of literally inseparable quality - perfectly pitched, given that Elimination Chamber was on the horizon, and all six men had to be on even footing ahead of it.
It was just a great TV match - thrilling, watertight, fought at an end-at-any-time urgency. Even Corbin, whose character exists to be unimpressed at everyone, was compelled to lavishly praise it.