10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2021
1. The Young Bucks Vs. The Lucha Bros. - AEW All Out
Penta El Zero M is fated to suffer a particularly cruel comparison: he's a phenomenal professional wrestler who isn't his brother.
It was particularly stirring, then, to watch him form the emotional core of the year's best professional wrestling match. After 15 minutes of blistering action, in which all four men played with the steel cage to modify their already mind-blowing arsenals, the pace slowed as the delayed effects of the insanity settled and registered. Penta's eyes appeared wide and vulnerable underneath the mask that Matt Jackson had torn apart, with gut-wrenching anxiety, just enough to keep the thing from falling apart into the ultimate luchador humiliation. The arm-breaking killer had never looked so hopeless - which of course elicited hope within a crowd that could no longer bear to sit down. He was still wearing his contacts, but his body language was so exceptional that it didn't matter.
This was the ultimate success of a match that, between its spectacle, state-of-the-art athleticism and blood-drenched emotional intensity, offered a mesmerising composite of the pro wrestling experience. The Young Bucks and the Lucha Bros. had elicited an unwavering longing for the intended result. The just result.
The match was such an injustice that the babyfaces had to win, and a molten crowd refused to sit down until they saw it. Pitch-perfect storytelling, pacing and drama. "This is wrestling" is just another overdone, performative chant.
This was f*cking wrestling.