8 Worst Wrestling Matches Of 2025 (According To The Internet)
Mainstream wrestling took backward steps in 2025, and these were the eight biggest leaps...
The wrestling year ended much as it started - with big arguments about matches.
Typically, it might be a nonsense tribal spat between "matches" and "stories" as if they're not both integral to one another, but in November, debate raged about the quality - or lack thereof - of CM Punk Vs Jey Uso from Saturday Night's Main Event. The match that crowned Punk World Champion for the second time this year was, generously, a contest of two halves. A rocky start filled with visible flubs and chemistry issues gradually grew into a hot conclusion defined by finisher trade-offs and kick outs that abandoned most of the tale previously told.
Not good, not a disaster, not anything really. Hence why a Wrestling Observer four star rating caused all the kerfuffle. One man's view, but an influential one. The slightly more democratic Cagematch landed on five-ish out of ten which feels more in line with the actual contest and serves as a good example of why it's perfect for this particular list. The system - curated and controlled by fans who contribute of their own free will - is fundamentally a good thing for such rankings, unless you're at the wrong end of the table...
(In line with the scope of our coverage, only WWE and AEW contests will be included, meaning there'll be no places for back-to-back stinkers Mickie James vs. Maki Itoh and Minoru Suzuki vs. Butterbean from this year's Mark Hitchcock Memorial show. Biggest platforms, biggest duds...)
8. Chris Jericho vs. Dax Harwood (AEW Collision - 11 January)
Rating: 2.96/10
Cursed by a finish so horrifically botched that even the most generous fans in attendance couldn't hold back the boos, Dax Harwood Vs Chris Jericho was a not-particularly-good television match that will be remembered as truly awful thanks to the closing collapse.
Lethargically wrestled throughout, the two presented the pretence of an epic during the first two thirds without actually managing to craft one, leaving them with very little credit in the bank when it came to the home straight. Scrooge McDuck-ian vaults wouldn't have bought them out of trouble by the end.
Things went further south when Jericho went to use the Ring Of Honor Championship to steal the win. He swung the weapon glacially rather than "wildly" as called by Tony Schiavone, so much so that Harwood and referee Bryce Remsburg would have looked dumber for getting hit, and it only got worse from there. When that failed, Jericho was supposed to take Remsburg's eyes long enough to use the belt again as Dax flew from the top with a headbutt, but he blew both the eye-rake and the belt shot. Dax had to take the ref again so Jericho could strike him for real this time, but the re-arranged spot didn't pass the sniff-test with the live crowd and the pair had to spin off into another finish where Jericho mercifully ended things with the Judas Effect.
Neither, understandably, looked thrilled with their work, and for Jericho it was the beginning of the end of his entire year. He worked just five more times, mostly in tags, before dropping the ROH strap to Bandido in April and disappearing from AEW entirely.