10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2020 (So Far)
8. Daniel Bryan Vs. AJ Styles - WWE SmackDown June 13
For years - decades, in fact - cynical WWE fans openly mocked the idea of a babyface, as mandated in promos, "bringing the prestige back to the Intercontinental Title".
The old mechanisms weren't in place. WWE didn't care enough to curate a long-term career, the "IC Title" phase of which was a tell of a main event push. Nor did they have it in them to position the belt itself as anything prestigious. It was a thin storyline driver with what had become a random, desperate, arbitrary legacy. It used to be that Vince thought of an Intercontinental Champion as a future WWE Champion. In recent years, it just meant that Vince quite liked them for a few weeks, or couldn't be bothered to think of anything imaginative for them to do beyond trade it for a few months with somebody else.
In a grim setting with fans created by a 3D printer in the uncanny valley, Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles somehow contrived to bring the prestige back.
Bryan within minutes put himself over as the greatest wrestling strategist on the planet with his gruesome contortion of AJ's arm. AJ looked agonised and helpless; the match looked like a fight. A professional respect and personal difference fuels their chemistry, realised here in a beautiful and convincing, technical and snug struggle that by the finish was engulfed in Bryan's glorious babyface fire.
In a great, great understated moment, with the sense of risk summoned by the failure to outmatch one another on the mat, Bryan and Styles collided in midair to both further establish the story of parity and intensify the excitement. They didn't connect abdomen to abdomen; this was an ugly, more natural collision designed impeccably to deepen the illusion. Not a millisecond was spared nor missed to further cast it in this classic; at one point, when Bryan tried to separate AJ's shoulder by cracking it against his own, Styles reached desperately for Bryan's neck.
It was the smallest movement, the smallest consideration, but it all formed a grander work of art.