10 Absolutely Incredible Wrestling Comparisons
1. Wrestlers Ageing Very Weirdly, Part 2
AJ Styles is not the AJ of old. He's still capable of the odd high-energy cracker, as evidenced by a recent forgotten gem opposite Rey Mysterio on the January 31, 2022 RAW, but he mostly works in a decidedly WWE rhythm.
Those matches with Edge weren't very dynamic, were they?
Making every move matter only works when the audience thinks the characters matter, and Edge's entire new gimmick is "gotten-to goth". All he does is explain, over and over again, that his new stable exists because he is taking that which he is owed. And he hates every sports franchise, which is convenient, because it gets a mild reaction in every city!
As ill-fitting and all over the place as this gimmick is, Edge in the right match can still absolutely go. He is 48 years old. AJ can still go to somewhere approaching his NJPW peak with the right opponent, and he is 44.
Hulk Hogan was also 44 when he worked a match so inert that it was nicknamed 'Age In The Cage'. The Steel Cage match from Halloween Havoc 1997 was a bore, and given the comparatively limited access to wrestling, it really felt at the time that they were literally the oldest men to have ever worked a match.
Moreover, Brock Lesnar is 44 now, and Hulk Hogan was 43 when he was fictionalised and buried as the coffin-dodging 'Huckster' in the Billionaire Ted skits.