10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2020
8. Daniel Bryan Vs. AJ Styles - WWE SmackDown, June 12
Across a toxic and divided pro wrestling fanbase, you're not likely to find a match as unifying as this technical masterpiece of June 12, 2020. Oddly, given that it was promoted by WWE, it presented professional wrestling at its purest. It was virtually impossible to dislike.
Painful, dramatic, convincing, and fought at an urgent pace without ever rushing itself, it was a fight worked with a quite staggering attention to detail. In one blistering sequence wrestled with a splendid World of Sport flavour, Styles cranked Bryan's left elbow and drove his shoulder hard down to the mat. Bryan showed enough endurance to fire Styles into the ropes, dropped down on his good arm with his left arm still limp, and took Styles down with a knee to the gut. The frenetic energy was incredible - and necessary.
There were no fans in attendance, only Performance Center recruits, so Bryan and Styles didn't put on a show. They put on a clinic; vaulting over sprinting attacks to score close near-falls with sunset flips, refusing to relinquish holds and struggling with accomplished technique to escape them, limb work has rarely looked so vicious, felt as exhilarating, or been sold with such wincing anguish.
It's said, rightly, that you can't get a true read on a pandemic match without a crowd that rewards psychology with noise. But short of that, referee Charles Robinson wore an expression of real distress, and then bloodlust, throughout. Watch him.
The impartial official is bang into it because it was virtually impossible to dislike.