10 Best Wrestling Matches NOBODY Watched
Randy Orton and Christian wrestled a BELTER at Over The Limit 2011. Who knew?
The best professional wrestling matches are those most immediately striking.
The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels' WrestleMania 25 epic - 'Taker's last greatest 'Mania match - was instantly a sports entertainment spectacle on the sports entertainment spectacle. Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada's Dominion 2018 classic, over the latter's IWGP Heavyweight Championship, was instantly a melodramatic demonstration of pure pro wrestling ability. MJF and Bryan Danielson's wildly theatrical Iron Man match from AEW's 2023 Revolution pay-per-view was instantly the stipulation's best illustration.
AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Samoa Joe; Kenny Omega and Adam Page vs. The Young Bucks; DIY vs. The Revival; CM Punk vs. John Cena; Bret Hart vs. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin; Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio; Kenny Omega vs. Bryan Danielson; Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat; Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard; Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay; GUNTHER vs. Sheamus; Josh Alexander vs. TJP; they were all instantly breathtaking displays of professional wrestling.
Sometimes, though, a good-to-great match can play out on a bad-to-terrible card. Bad business, either through poor television ratings, lesser pay-per-view buyrates, or the event-in-question being largely inaccessible, is instrumental in such matches going neglected and omitted from Best In The World conversations.
For every WrestleMania spectacle and world-class NJPW showdown, there is...
10. Booker T Vs. Jeff Jarrett (WCW Bash At The Beach 2000)
WCW, in 2000, is rarely worth mentioning in a positive spotlight.
The year's Bash At The Beach was partly at fault for the above sentiment, drawing 100,000 pay-per-view buys: a stark drop of 75,000 in comparison to 1999's instalment. It was marred by the controversy surrounding Vince Russo and Hulk Hogan's worked-shoot-turned-legitimate-shoot, but its undercard was an uninspired series of lackadaisical matches accompanied by the stereotypical tropes of WCW's dying year. A cavalcade of run-ins wrecked otherwise mediocre matches and the sterile Graveyard match between Vampiro and The Demon was every bit as atrocious as you'd imagine.
Booker T and Jeff Jarrett didn't have much in the way of competition for Match of the Night - and yet their headliner seemed to be from an entirely different pay-per-view.
Not necessarily blow away great, T and Jarrett stole the show on a show not worth stealing from. Their chemistry shone through, working through a well-received main event with a handful of observable spots, with Booker's spike bump via Piledriver on a monitor being as remarkable as it got. There were the usual WCW main event nuances for the time - Vince Russo still held the pen, partner - but in an era when WCW couldn't even sit on its ar*e anymore, Booker T and Jeff Jarrett delivered.