10 Wrestling Matches Better Than They Had Any Right To Be
In which expectations are speared.
Expectations were low going into these matches.
This is understandable whenever a non-wrestler is involved. You'd think the involvement of a publicity and money-hungry non-wrestling celebrity would guarantee embarrassment. Inexplicably - due to painstaking preparation and searing crowd heat - but you'd often be wrong.
The art we hold so dearly to our hearts is an incredibly difficult one to master - so much so that some years-long veterans, like Buff Bagwell and Mideon, never got good at it, even if the former somehow reckons he's more popular than Samoa Joe. Wrestlers who were once lumped in that bracket have been known to break through it on the strength of just one performance.
Much can conspire to mitigate the success of a would-be barnstormer - not least of which the dreaded time constraint. A memorable wrestling match doesn't necessarily need half an hour in which to propel itself to stratospheric critical acclaim, but general consensus has it that, in order to craft an expert contest, ten minutes is the absolute minimum required. Anything under that - see Roman Reigns Vs. Dean Ambrose at Survivor Series 2015 - runs very close to undermining its stakes.
Conversely, this brevity is often exactly what a poor-on-paper match needs in order to achieve maximum emotional resonance...
10. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. Vs. The Big Show - WWE WrestleMania XXIV
Matches involving non-wrestlers have a surprising success rate - owing to the fact that they are meticulously rehearsed move for move well in advance to reduce the risk of embarrassment and injury to their superstar participants.
That said, pre-match indications for Big Show Vs. Mayweather did not inspire much optimism. Mayweather was initially positioned in the face role. This would have been an uphill battle regardless of his unenviable personality - wrestling fans usually want wrestlers to win such matches - but it became insurmountable in the face of "Money's" preternatural arrogance.
The hasty but logical heel turn had the potential to disregard the inherent David Vs. Goliath psychology - but WWE enterprisingly circumvented and subverted this by involving Mayweather's "entourage" as obstacles through which Show had to smash in order to get his hands on him.
To Mayweather's considerable credit, he threw himself into the chickensh*t heel role with unnatural abandon. The terrified extent to which he attempted to avoid and then ultimately sold Show's offence was admirable - his out of character performance rescued what otherwise would have been a horrendously-misjudged mismatch structured in total contravention to the pulse of the fanbase.