10 Best Storytellers In Wrestling Right Now
Whose matches are you most invested in?
NXT has failed in its remit of siphoning critical numbers away from AEW Dynamite.
More worryingly still, despite being put over huge over Survivor Series weekend, and seemingly answering so many longstanding complaints about the main roster - the in-ring action is incredible, it's (mostly) a meritocracy in which those the fans respond to are pushed accordingly - it has also failed to convince a huge number of WWE's core audience to watch on Wednesdays. In 2020, NXT on USA's live viewership has settled in the 700,000 range. On average, a third of the RAW audience is watching. The grim, ominous part is that it is a fantastic pro wrestling show - or more accurately, it's a fantastic pro wrestling show on television.
So what's stopping them?
Is it content fatigue? Seven hours of original WWE programming is daunting. Does the intimate furnace of Full Sail betray WWE's definitive rhetoric, of bigger automatically meaning better?
Or is it NXT's rather dry approach to crafting stories? In another welcome contrast to the main roster, the storylines make sense. To a fault; built primarily on physical post-match beatdowns, the pretext for matches is deeply basic. Perhaps NXT's decline can be attributed to the fact that wrestling is primarily a broader storytelling medium.
Those soaring, relative to this era, might strengthen that theory.
10. Jon Moxley
Jon Moxley constructed the best finishing sequence of 2019 in his very first match outside of WWE.
After a blistering, violent match with Juice Robinson, in which he relished biting his opponent's forehead - and the creative freedom it tasted of - Moxley hit the Dirty Deeds. It failed to put him away. He roared back sucessfully with his new, elevated Death Rider. This electric near-fall doubled as a means of putting over his opponent and himself as a more formidable and sadistic evolution. Moxley stormed to a 5-0 lead in his G1 Climax block, and his blinding performance level earned the push. His intricate takedown of Shingo Takagi wasn't too dissimilar to a Bret Hart match perfect in its logic, where his refusal to explode in the face of Tetsuya Naito's aloof posturing depicted Moxley as an expert pre-match strategist.
In AEW, Moxley arrested the Dean Ambrose joke narrative entirely by getting himself over as a true hard bastard. Against Kenny Omega, whom he framed in canon as the impetus behind that G1 run in an inspired touch, he used the most deranged of tools to win a divisive, unforgettable match in which the weapons doubled as symbols of his characteristics. He crawled through broken glass to put over his relentless drive to be taken seriously. "Napalm death," indeed.
Against Darby Allin, Moxley stood still and shrugged off his daredevil opponent's top rope dive. He had reached the height of his powers, weeks away from topping the rankings, and there was no moving him.