10 Best Opening 60 Seconds Of Wrestling Matches Ever
Great body language and violently battered bodies - starring CM Punk, Goldberg and more...
It's said in wrestling that the fans only remember the finish. It's obviously the most important aspect of the match - it's what the match itself builds towards - and a terrible finish undermines everything that came before it.
A bad finish actively makes fans resent the investment of time they put into it. How many times has WWE in the last year or so laid out a 20+ minute match, only for it to end in some bullsh*t distraction or cop-out heel disqualification? It's a booking method that almost makes you resent the talent for taking bumps. The bump is meant to elicit feelings of sympathy or catharsis. Given the very real physical toil, resentment in both directions is the absolute last thing wrestling should achieve.
But leave it to WWE.
Conversely, a slow start can undermine a match too. A match that takes a while to really get going can really inform the drama of the final third, provided the story threads are treated with consistency and are intensified as the match unfolds. Sometimes, a good match is a boring match with five minutes of great action welded to the end.
Sometimes, a match starts so well that you never want it to end...
10. Brock Lesnar Vs. Goldberg - WWE WrestleMania 33
The precedent of a flash win had already been established at Survivor Series the prior year.
In a rare and underrated feat of modern long-term storytelling, WWE exploited that story beat to perfection at WrestleMania 33. Everybody knew the match could end at any moment, and was exceptionally unlikely to go 8 minutes, much less 20. WWE effectively orchestrated a match in which every second was fraught with unmissable drama, and they stretched it out for the duration.
The opening minute was a fantastic subversion of the original match. This time, Brock Lesnar sprinted out of the gates. He struck Goldberg with a deluge of Germans, which might scan as boring/familiar, but it wasn't. The timing of the sequence was electrifying. He barely waited for Goldberg to absorb the blows before hoisting him back up for more.
Then, in another heart-pounding subversion of that, after the third German, Lesnar roared in a macho flex. Literally just as the sound emerged from his mouth, Goldberg leapt back up and speared him in half. This was so good that even Kevin Dunn was on form - or rather, the sprint was so furious that he didn't even have time to cut away. Goldberg exploded into frame from out of nowhere. What an outstanding, brutal-looking twist this was.
Goldberg smashed Lesnar with two more spears, one executed through the barricade, to cap off the first minute.
The "Paul Heyman match" has outstayed its welcome in 2022, but when it was hot, it was white-hot.