10 Collector’s Items Of Modern WWE Brilliance

10. A Wrestling Match...About Wrestling!

What a novel concept, Jesus Christ.

Wrestling style very rarely informs wrestling conflict in WWE because it is "beneath them" and the style is homogenised to f*ck in the first place. The source of conflict is often tacked on quite hideously with poisonings, swamp betrayals, alcoholic-shaming and the like.

Ahead of Elimination Chamber, Drew Gulak taunted Daniel Bryan. He was a student of the game, and Bryan specifically, and reckoned he knew how to surpass the technical maestro. A match was made in which a lower rung wrestler wished to ascend by defeating a wrestler who excelled in the same field. This was a believable challenge and it stemmed from something a pro wrestler, were this not all total bullsh*t, would seek to do.

The wrestling match about wrestling absolutely ruled, too; painful and convincing, Bryan, an immaculate technician with a genius grasp of controlling a crowd, knew precisely when WWE's broader audience might lose interest in the intricacy of the mat battle.

He seemed to time to the very second when exactly to rain down or absorb a stiff strike before the head-dropping fireworks of a hot closing stretch atypical of a regular WWE match - and all the better for it.