10 Times WWE Totally Changed Its In-Ring Style

Twitter is a hellscape of an app that stinks of the piss of its endless contests, but it's good for the odd meme and reappraising certain wrestlers and certain eras.

The Barbarian and Lex Luger have developed a cult retrospective acclaim years removed from the gimmicks and fashion trends that had mothballed their work. Davey Richards has emerged to receive his due credit as a genuinely terrific pro wrestler once damned by the self-indulgence and fired-up no-selling that is so prevalent now.

Perhaps one day this will create a new lens through which to analyse the WWF Women's scene of the mid-'90s which, while a one-dimensional vehicle to push Alundra Blayze, yielded some very good matches. The terrifying Bull Nakano was, ironically, a joy to watch, and brought with scary physicality a level of creativity and technique that far outstripped all but the elite male talents contracted at the time.

But Aja Kong Vs. Chaparita Asari is such a crazed outlier in WWE's canon that it gets over in cult circles as a fantastic, ghoulish aberration. Asari in an early, desperate bid for control unleashed a series of innovative, athletic strikes the likes of which haven't been since before Kong used her drastic power advantage to effectively kill her to death with a series of gruesome moves one will never see in a WWE ring ever again.

For one weird night, WWE distilled the diverse joy of joshi in four fabulously macabre minutes.