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

3. Bryan Danielson Vs. Swerve Strickland (All In 2024)

Again: Bryan Danielson is so great that it’s unfair on every other wrestler.

In the 2020s, as the advertised dream match drifted out of fashion through overexposure, melodrama and “cinema” defined the decade. It was a divisive trend that ripped an already less than civil fanbase in half.

The monologues get in the way of the wrestling!

Who cares about wrestling?

And so on.

Bryan Danielson fused broad, vocalised emotion with wonderful, emotive pro wrestling action to create a masterpiece. The stadium vibrated during every last second of his career-threatening challenge of Swerve Strickland’s title.

This was violent and terrifying before the big swing of a scene, which was crucial. Both men had dropped one another on their heads from grisly, super-dangerous angles. Danielson only drew on the love of his family when he had little stamina or strength left in him. In any other context, Danielson’s performance may have scanned as corny. Even in his big match, in Wembley, he had to earn it. And earn it he did: the man was getting the piss beaten out of him, he was bleeding profusely, and he entered the match with his neck in rough - precarious - shape.

Swerve Strickland was instrumental to its success. He was in fantastically vile form throughout. The sound effect of his mocking Yes! kicks was gruesome.

As Danielson fired up, his daughter, stationed at ringside, started jumping up and down on the spot. Has wrestling ever intersected violence and beauty so deftly?

Bryan ate the kicks, and then unleashed a barrage of his own before smashing Swerve with the Busaiku.

In a heartbreaking moment of pure badass theatre, Swerve literally brushed off its effects and blasted the Dragon with the House Call. The resulting near-fall was incredible.

Love alone didn’t win the most loud and emotional match of the 2020s; it only started the fire. Bryan was careful not to get too cute with this adorable moment.