10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2020 (So Far)
9. Riho Vs. Nyla Rose - AEW Dynamite February 12
Riho is a tremendous worker in the strictest - and perhaps most admirable - definition of the word.
Without fail, although U.S. audiences are familiar with her, she manages to convince them time and time again that, while technically capable and very wily with the reversal, she lacks the strength to hang with much larger opponents. She is so sympathetic and so gifted at very gradually building a match that she repeated the trick in her second, superior AEW Women's Title match against Nyla Rose.
The layout of this match was a particular test of her working magic: she had to fire up to a crescendo that otherwise would have stretched suspension of disbelief to its limit. After an awesome underdog performance, one that involved a terrifically creative spot of ingenuity, in which she slid across a table to crack Rose with a knee, she mounted a comeback with a series of snap dragon suplexes. The incredulity informed much of the pop, but fans didn't see through it. It wasn't a novelty.
Riho sold the agony of Nyla's power-based assault, and her resolve to fight back, to get a patently ridiculous sequence over in a tremendous narrative-destroying war.