10 Best WWE Career-Threatening Matches Ever
These superstars' swan songs couldn't have had a better ending.
The year of 2016 has featured a handful of remarkable matches in WWE, but you would be hard-pressed to find a better bout than what we witnessed at No Mercy between Dolph Ziggler and The Miz. Despite not closing the show (which it absolutely should have), they captured that feeling that all career-threatening matches should have, where the fans buy into the stipulation and legitimately believe that one of the wrestlers could be on their way out of the company.
For years, fans have been conditioned to not care about these type of match-ups because the “fired” Superstar almost always returns a short time later. But Miz and Ziggler brought back that magic in the most amazing way possible with their excellent outing that will go down as one of the greatest career-threatening matches in company history.
A career-threatening match is one of the most underrated stipulations of all-time because when done right, they can be brilliant. When a wrestler's livelihood is on the line, it makes fans want to invest in the angle that much more, and the outcome is rarely predictable. These ten matchups truly exemplify the art of a compelling match of this ilk, which take the fans on an emotional roller coaster ride with everything it has to offer.
10. Jeff Hardy Vs. CM Punk (SmackDown - 28 August, 2009)
In a year that was largely dominated by John Cena, Triple H, and Randy Orton on the Raw side of things, Jeff Hardy and CM Punk rose to the occasion during the summer of 2009 on SmackDown and had one of the most ruthless rivalries in a great while.
What was so refreshing about it was how real it came across and that fans could feel the actual animosity between the two. Their drastically different lifestyles made for a stellar story, not to mention that the matches never ceased to deliver. They traded the World Heavyweight Championship back and forth for months, culminating in one last Steel Cage match on the 28 August edition of SmackDown.
Rumors had been running rampant for months that Hardy was on his way out of the organization to take time off and heal nagging injuries, so the outcome of the match should have been predictable. However, fans said the same about his Night of Champions match in July before he won the world title for a second time, so they couldn't be so sure he was losing again to Punk.
Their steel cage match was all action with zero interference as Hardy put it all on the line in an attempt to regain the gold. In the end, Punk reigned supreme to retain his title and send The Charismatic Enigma packing from WWE. As if that wasn't enough, he left him laying to close the episode by blindsiding him from behind. What a heel Punk was.