10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2020 (So Far)
1. Kenny Omega & Hangman Page Vs. The Young Bucks - AEW Revolution
Often, a match so heavy on storytelling can feel clumsily (and revealingly) welded to the action with a jarring melodrama. The acting, removed from its context of an athletic performance, resonates - and undermines - with a cringe.
This match told one of professional wrestling's greatest stories entirely through the medium of an exhilarating banger.
Matt Jackson didn't stare at his hands with his conflicted conscience, chewing the scenery after removing Kenny Omega's kenisio tape. They trembled imperceptibly. Omega didn't dead-sell just a move, for a long time, to allow Jackson the stage of his hard camera moment. His injured shoulder - ravaged by PAC's Brutaliser just days earlier, deftly sidestepping what is barely a contrivance most wrestlers and wrestling fans accept as the default - had all but finished him off. Every grand storytelling moment was earned through every beat, many spanning several years.
What the Elite accomplished here transcended pro wrestling storytelling and action in the course of 30 minutes.
The conflicts were endless. Omega and Nick Jackson's attempts to maintain a sporting tone were destroyed by Hangman Page and Matt's spit-lobbing brawl. Nick then sided with his brother, reverting back to the prick that catapulted him to stardom and notoriety. He at once dazzled and infuriated a tortured crowd with his next-level spectacular pro wrestling, making a delightful, flexing mockery of the idea that a wrestler must obnoxiously bore the audience in one dimension to draw heat.
This was a story of fraying brotherhood that reduced its audience to emotional, divided and yet exhilarated wrecks. The match called back to the rich history of the Elite and the Golden Elite - and guess which of the wrestlers here wasn't invited to that stable, further driving his motivation - in moments of deliberate and inadvertent, but still palpable, disrespect. Page was revealed to be the true hero of the piece when an enraged Omega kicked at one when blasted with the Golden Trigger.
The perfect vehicle to get a babyface over, this, too, was the perfect match.