10 Most Ambitious Wrestling Matches Of All Time
Outrageous farce and seven stars.
At the upcoming Super Show-Down event in Saudi Arabia, WWE is set to present a 50-man Battle Royal attraction, making it the largest field in company history.
Adding nine more men to the 41-man formula of the October 14, 2011 SmackDown seems ambitious in itself—and that it is without factoring in the Saudi General Sports Authority’s bizarre fetish for the elephantine and the ancient. Revisiting that weird ’11 bout now, it’s very difficult to determine quite where Hiroku Sumi factors into this; the match is a hive of indecipherable activity, necessitating the instant elimination of Cody Rhodes purely so that the hovering Dolph Ziggler can even enter. The rapid burst of eliminations obviously helped clear the ring, but it’s worth reiterating: the Saudis really like the New Generation and the enormous men who starred throughout it. Some poor prick is going to have to start the match on Babatunde’s shoulders. Surely, it would be easier for WWE to present a 50-woman Battle Royal, on the basis that the Women’s roster is comprised of smaller performers.
Why don’t they do that?
How WWE accomplishes this ambitious affair is anybody’s guess. We will have to wait until Super Show-Down, an event that is equivalent to or perhaps exceeds WrestleMania, to find out.
It may yet find its way amongst the pantheon of the intrepid…
10. The Invisible Man Vs. The Invisible Stan - GCW Joey Janela’s Spring Break 3 Part 1
An unhinged thought experiment sprung from the genius mind of the Bad Boy, Joey Janela, this year’s WrestleMania Weekend banter standout saw two invisible brothers wage war.
The Invisible Stan had murdered his own flesh and blood, or so he had thought: the Invisible Man returned to avenge the attempt, and a grudge match between the two was set for Spring Break 3.
The Invisible Man and the Invisible Stan didn’t merely know one another inside out; they knew each other best, and this severed yet intimate, inescapable connection manifested as a furious exchange of rapid, traded pinfall attempts. They had grown up wrestling together in their own childhood bedrooms, in a more innocent time, and what a perfect, visual metaphor for that thinnest of lines between love and hate this was. This breathtaking clinic echoed back, almost move-for-move, to a time of play and of bonding. And now, these two warriors hated one another in what became, with a searing emotional heft, something close to a fight to the death.
They never could agree on who was the better technician, all those years ago, and they couldn’t on that night of April 5, 2019. The animosity was too much, and so the fight reached the balcony and broke through tables (!). The extra ringside officials swore later they were lucky to break the fall. They couldn’t even see the brothers, they fell so violently and so quickly.
But it’s the primary official, Bryce Remsburg, who deserves the credit. The man manipulated a molten audience reaction by himself through a bravura, perfectly-timed, flailing performance. The audience deserves credit, too, for playing along.
And people say that’s what’s wrong with wrestling nowadays.