15 Wrestling Matches You Won't Believe Happened In 2018
13. Matt Riddle Vs Minoru Suzuki (Matt Riddle's Bloodsport)
A late Low Ki cancellation threatened to completely sabotage eponymous headliner Matt Riddle’s main event on WrestleMania 34 weekend, but the uniquely grim Bloodsport card instead proffered a perfect and petrifying replacement.
Everything about the battle between the ‘Super King Of Bros’ and supreme ‘King’ of kicking the f*ck out of people captured the sublime success of independent wrestling this year.
Waging war in a ring with no ropes, the pair got on with punching and kicking and snatching and clutching as if everything they attempted was a real as it looked. Exactly the way wrestling used to be, and yet performed in a manner nobody had yet really seen.
The entire card offered similar hybrid encounters, but Riddle and Suzuki’s collected auras elevated their action beyond everybody else.
It proved to be one of the most celebrated matches of a stacked weekend of action in New Orleans. Brilliant in its primitive simplicity, the match as a glorious and grisly exhibition of violent submission exchanges and eye-watering strike battles.
The in-ring hug at the climax was a sweet out-of-character moment for the Suzuki-Gun leader. The vicious choke he’d won the match with just seconds earlier was bang on brand.