10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2023
1. Bryan Danielson Vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. - AEW WrestleDream
In a post-everything world, it's often difficult to get into wrestling. An air of fatigue clouds everything. Wrestling fans have been spoiled in this AEW era by unthinkable signings, shock jumps, fountains of blood, and a ridiculously stacked number of phenomenal professional wrestling matches.
Fans are spoiled. They've seen everything.
As a result, what stood out as the very best professional wrestling match of the year was the purest version of the form - one rope-run, shockingly few near-falls, zero in the way of easy shortcuts to a "This is awesome!" chant - but it needed those years of constant brilliance to work.
Bryan Danielson Vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. met in the ring having mastered, perfected and redefined the technical art. In a year in which the word "story" became so tedious, this was the best, most engrossing story of all.
Who - and this was so simple but so earned - was the best?
The storytelling and application of technique was otherworldly, but the application was, for much of the duration, impossible. Never has momentum felt more slippery, never has it oscillated with such an incredible, gripping sense of struggle. The granular detail here was unprecedented. Creating a sense of immersion so enchanting that it just had to be real, very early, Danielson attempted to bridge out of a hammerlock. Almost imperceptibly, he leaned on his left arm, protecting the injured right. He worked a momentary lapse of concentration so subtly that most didn't notice. That was only picked up here on the second viewing. A third viewing - and a fourth, a fifth - would yield countless more moments in which even a dangled, exposed limb is detected in panic by the wrestler in a defensive position.
They deliberately squandered easy pops to maintain this level of depth and strategy. Deep cut fan favourite hold, Danielson's Cattle Mutilation, was reversed by ZSJ before it was even locked in, further conveying the idea that two chess masters had studied hundreds of hours of tape in preparation for their grand final.
It was never boring or up its own arse, either. It wasn't a po-faced grapplefest match. It was dynamic, not attritional, rendered incredibly exciting by the constant, limb-saving movement: if either man was still, a trap was waiting. The traps were layered, multiple were set in advance. This was a series of puzzles insolvable to even the former and current workers at the commentary desk being solved by two masters, over and over again.
Every moment of impact soared as a result of its unreal, patient discipline. Near the finish, Danielson's arm took a battering so much more effective through his constant fear of exposing it throughout, and ZSJ - somehow - took a dragon screw so disgusting that it looked like a real sports moment in which ligaments are torn to shreds.
A masterpiece: one of the best matches ever.