10 Stiffest WWE Matches Of The PG Era

8. Samoa Joe Vs. Tommaso Ciampa - NXT (December 2015)

Daniel Bryan kick Roman Reigns
WWE.com

NXT has had its fair share of stiff matches, none more so than the bout between Samoa Joe and Tommaso Ciampa from December of 2015. Both Joe and Ciampa have spent their careers working outside of World Wrestling Entertainment, where stiffness and legitimate force often comes into play a lot more.

They two truly went at it here. Joe hits Ciampa with a forearm early on that is absolutely brutal. Ciampa gets quite a bit of offence in on Joe, but once he fails with a Kimura lock his number is well and truly up. Joe backs Ciampa into the corner and delivers a roundhouse kick to the skull that may very well have knocked Ciampa clean out.

The sound alone is enough to make a grown man wince. Leather plus skull times force can only produce one sound.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.