30 Best AEW Matches Ever (So Far...)

20. Will Ospreay Vs. Konosuke Takeshita (Revolution 2024)

This was an Advertised Dream Match, a match that was booked purely because it was guaranteed to be great. It was never going to go seven minutes.

It was transparent, perhaps even cynical, but the idea was simple: AEW had just signed the wrestler who is the best at making the fans go ballistic, and he was tasked with making the fans go ballistic.

Will Ospreay, making his in-ring debut as an AEW full-timer, made the fans go ballistic.

Turbo-charged athletic wrestling with massive bomb explosions, Ospreay Vs. Takeshita was impossible-looking. Consider Ospreay’s bump for Takeshita’s German suplex, which is one of the best wrestling moves ever. Ospreay is so literally unreal that it was as if he had located a new part of his body, between his neck and his back, on which to take it. His physical timing was a level beyond perfect. It was a physics-defying arc with screen-shaking collision detection: just supernaturally great stuff.

Also, Take had motioned to hit a dragon suplex before readjusting the set-up to his specialised throw at the last moment. That was a lovely bit of deception, a detail that prevented the match from feeling like a mere exchange of bombs.

You thought the Blue Thunder Bomb Oscutter counter was the coolest thing you’d ever seen, until Takeshita set up his Crunchy by tying Ospreay’s hands together between his legs and diving onto his head in the space of a second.

Extravagantly impressive cutting edge wrestling you couldn’t believe was performed by two human beings. AEW was riddled with problems in 2023; the rise of Ospreay was the solution.