10 Best Wrestling Matches Of 2023

On television, Charlotte Flair plays a miscast babyface so disinterested that you wonder half the time why she gets the relentless big push.

And then she plays situational heel to smug perfection on the grandest stage, and you are reminded.

After a gorgeous struggle of a lock-up, she put Rhea Ripley in a hammerlock and paint-brushed the back of her head. The look on Charlotte's face was fantastic. Just the most detestable, above-it-all expression. This set the tone for a nasty, domineering performance against which Rhea had to bring her awesome power game. This was explored early after a bruising striking exchange when Rhea dodged a springboard kick, hoisted Flair on her shoulders, and smashed her face-first onto the top turnbuckle with a wicked reverse Alabama slam.

As the story unfolded, Charlotte drew on her vast experience to reverse Rhea's counters. In one excellent sequence, Rhea rolled through a crossbody, but Flair countered Riptide with a sickening neck-jammer of a DDT. PAC would have winced at the bump Rhea took.

Rhea also displayed an ability to pick her spots by sprinting up the turnbuckle and throwing Flair to the canvas with a frightening avalanche German, and as the match progressed and the bombs dropped, this felt as much like Budokan Hall in the '90s as the glitz of WrestleMania. This was so brutal by WWE standards that it felt, thrillingly, like a transgression. A stunned atmosphere filtered through SoFi stadium.

The attritional, sweat-drenched tone deepened and the match threatened to peak when Rhea casually invented one of the sickest finishers ever. Blasting Flair with a straitjacket German right onto her face, Michael Cole - for once justified in his hysterics - called it like he'd witnessed a murder.

The match did in fact peak at the finish: yes, they did the clichéd kick-out faces in a very familiar finisher-fest closing stretch, but, for once, it was earned.

This was one of the best, most convincing struggles in WWE history.