10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2022
6. FTR Vs. The Young Bucks - AEW Dynamite, April 6
Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment, but there's no better feeling as a fan of professional wrestling than when a heavily-hyped dream match gets off to a dream start knowing that several more minutes left of guaranteed excellence await.
Young Bucks Vs. FTR II, a sudden and major surprise of a match, sparked into life with some liquid FTR mat work and kept fans guessing throughout in a perfect exploration of that theme.
The recent FTR babyface turn helped the drama enormously. Still a novelty watching Harwood reach out for the hot tag with a fired-up crowd begging him to slap hands, this new, unfamiliar, inexplicably great role doubled the surprise of Nick Jackson's cut-off. Nick smashed Dax in the jaw with a thrust kick with just unreal timing; if he was a nanosecond off, he'd have botched it. Every last beat of a classic was timed with laser precision.
When wrestlers collaborate over their upcoming match, they compare their move-sets and suggest counters with a dramatic swing in momentum in mind. The two best tag teams of their generation arrived at the best counter of the year: deep into the match, just as the fans were absolutely losing their minds, the Young Bucks set up the Meltzer Driver. In a counter as physically impressive as it was creative, Dax Harwood caught Nick Jackson mid-flip rotation, bounced him off the ropes, and flattened him with a Liger bomb.
A breathtaking counter in and of itself, it was more than that: it was FTR working the Young Bucks out, an awesome moment of the two contrasting styles gelling together doubling as an intelligent strategic move from a man who had just become a clutch player in that pivotal moment.