25 Best Wrestling Shows EVER
7. WCW Great American Bash 1989
Ric Flair Vs. Terry Funk headlined the best wrestling show of the 1980s: a decade defined now by a fake nostalgia driven through faulty memory.
It felt more real then, the ball-knowers and anti-"gymnastics" crowd alike declare. The magic has since waned. Nobody struggles anymore. Everybody is too preoccupied with wrestling a great match, and not trying to wrestle a match that happens to be great. Apparently. Ric Flair loved to be known as the best back in the '80s, and his marathon runtimes reflected that pursuit.
The 1989 Great American Bash is the fake self-implanted memory that is also real.
Wrestling was never believable back then, and selling obviously still happens - but watching Flair Vs. Funk now, it’s hard not to reckon with the fact that something is missing. Fire, soul, grit. The animosity and agony conveyed in that seminal main event renders a lot of what is seen today more choreographed and synthetic and showy.
Weirdly, the WarGames semi-main was one of the relatively poorer genre efforts of the day, despite the inclusion of world-class brawlers Terry Gordy and Steve Williams, but it was still a super-loud blast of a melee.
Sting Vs. the Great Muta was mind-flowing futuristic action for its time, and is still a wonderful sprint between two of wrestling’s most memorable and cool characters now. Lex Luger Vs. Ricky Steamboat was a lively bit of business as well. Steamboat guided Luger through it, but Luger kept pace in a lean ripper that never stopped moving.
The undercard wasn’t great, few were in that era, but it did yield a breezy violent showcase of the Steiner Brothers at their rawest.