10 Best Wrestling Storylines Right Now

9. The Hiromu Takahashi Vs. Ryu Lee Blood Feud

Randy Orton Edge
NJPW

This, a few years back, was quintessential pro wrestling stuff: elemental in premise and spectacular in execution.

Hiromu Takahashi and Ryu (Dragon) Lee absolutely despised one another, they fought, and those fights were amazing. Those fights were amazing because they fused a sense of genuine, intense animosity with exhilarating execution when, too often even in this vaunted era, those necessary components are mutually exclusive. Framed with awesome, double-pin parity in Mexico - they were inseparable legacy rivals immediately - the feud could not be contained, making it to Japan in 2017. Those matches were incredible; they used danger as its key theme, to create both intra-match drama and the feeling that they would kill one another or die trying.

This reached its grim, inevitable end in San Francisco in 2019, when an exhausted Lee botched a Phoenix-Plex and broke Takahashi's neck. For a time, it was thought Takahashi would never wrestle again.

Wonderfully, it was only the end of the beginning; the feud has resumed in 2020, at the New Beginning In Osaka, at which Lee and Takahashi pulverised one another with a relentless exchange of overhand chops. They couldn't kill one another with insanely propulsive dives, so they tried instead with death via thousand cuts.

That Phoenix-Plex was teased to unbearable anxiety, too. Takahashi and Lee have done everything to one another, and there's still room on that abattoir floor.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!