10 Best Wrestling Matches With The Worst Builds
1. Trish Stratus Vs. Becky Lynch - WWE Payback 2023
Sometimes - despite the defining discourse of 2023 - WWE does not actually tell a story. Or at least a good one.
Yes, Zoey Stark was added to the Becky Lynch Vs. Trish Stratus programme, which spanned from April to September. She helped Trish at Night of Champions and at Money In The Bank, so the feud was plotted. Incidents happened. But it was still so banal, nowhere near hefty enough to go as long as it did. It was a premise - Trish was jealous of Becky and the plaudits she received for elevating the division that Trish had in fact rescued from the depths - masquerading as a storyline.
Interferences, count-outs, DQs: the full carny gamut of uninspired WWE cliché was ran just to pad this premise out.
It didn't help that Becky and Trish shared anti-chemistry in the ring, either. The failed pursuit of the Women's Tag Team titles instigated the whole thing on the April 10 Raw, and it was a shambles. At Night of Champions, Becky had to grab Trish's legs in order to take a hurricanrana by herself. Idealess and actively bad, shockingly, the whole thing was rescued at the death.
The Payback Steel Cage blow-off was a triumph.
Remarkably tight and snug, given their previous form, Trish used her yoga-drilled flexibility to create a moment of heart-pounding terror when she flopped over the side of the cage before taking a superplex.
Much as it was built with great suspense as a modern genre affair, with spectacular, committed high spots, the all-important grudge tone was there - and they traded working punches in one class sequence that, while not '80s Memphis-tier exactly, were thrown with awesome gusto by Trish, who was a woman possessed to go out on a high.