10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2022
4. Sheamus Vs. Gunther - WWE Clash At The Castle
In 2022, across both mainstream companies, a philosophical war raged between pro wrestling and sports entertainment.
In AEW, the Blackpool Combat Club and the Jericho Appreciation Society clashed over the opposing values, where in WWE, following Vince McMahon resigning in disgrace, the "new" era was heralded by several talents saying the word "wrestling" loudly and proudly onscreen. Wrestling is what it should all be; sports entertainment an abomination devised by a man who hated what we all love.
Gunther Vs. Sheamus proved that the two approaches needn't sit uneasily beside one another. In an emotive and gruesomely physical war, that played out to deafening noise in a massive stadium, Sheamus attempted to trap Gunther and smack him with the Beats of the Bodhran. It's a popular, interactive, quintessentially WWE bit designed to hurt his opponent and put smiles on people's faces. Nobody has ever sold it as brilliantly as Gunther, who struggled as if tortured through two attempts.
Crowd interaction, struggle, physicality, the graduating sense of hope that escalated the crowd response: this was majestic wrestling and theatre working in seamless harmony.
An electrifying match, the finish was a lesson from which AEW and WWE should learn: Sheamus went out like a hero, his back giving out at the last, and nobody thought less of him following this narrowest of warrior's defeat. The opposite was true: Sheamus conjured such rare emotion that he was never more over than after the fact.
Of course, that war was unreal at one point...