10 Most Improved Wrestlers On The Planet Today
3. The Young Bucks
They're not daft, the Young Bucks.
Improvement is usually the result of committing to a known weakness. Drew McIntyre knew he didn't look the part of an ass-kicker, so committed to an ultra-shredded physical transformation. Finn Bálor deflected potential "vanilla midget" accusations by developing his aesthetic and character, in response to which WWE settled on the substituted adjective "tiny". Tomohiro Ishii sought to perfect his selling game; knowing he was never in line for an Ace-sized push, he transformed from also-ran to the ballsiest loser on the planet.
The Bucks were always great at selling. What's so literally magic about their annus mirabilis of 2018 is that they hid this element of their game in plain sight only to show the audience the card when that audience was ready to accept the new narrative.
The rise of Being The Elite.
All In.
The rise to the ranks of heavyweights.
All of this converged to announce their entrance into the realm of the legendary, at which point Matt and Nick consciously conveyed not merely that they could sell, but that they were among the very best practitioners of the art.
Matt's agonised back selling added a layer of pathos to their matches, while, in parallel, Nick, at Dominion, thrashed his foot against the post to inform the dramatic heft of their new road. Were they not so set in their ways, the old guard would have to acknowledge their brilliance.
No matter: virtually everybody else has, at precisely the right time.