Best Wrestling Storyline Every Year 1989-2024

7. 2018: Kazuchika Okada Vs. Kenny Omega

In 2018, the greatest match of all-time happened.

Omega, generating a level of unprecedented, hysterical noise, perfected the art of sports-oriented storytelling at Dominion 2018. With his preposterously cut physique, he used stamina as the key to unlock the unsolvable puzzle that Okada was. This worked to an incredibly dramatic extent, since Okada was - objectively - the most dominant champion in NJPW history.

The opposite of going long for going long’s sake, Omega, driving the unbearable tension, sold his ribs throughout after the latest crazed, impossible feat of bumping. All that intense preparation, just to get seriously winded: what a heartbreaking story beat that cast real doubt over the outcome. What a genius Omega was at his peak.

Deep in the match, Omega instead relied on his heart, thus completing his babyface turn, by drawing on the inspiration of the men he betrayed (AJ Styles and Kota Ibushi) in atonement.

The most impossible athletic excitement and precision fused with heart, soul, noise, drama, epic stakes: this was in many ways, if not every last one of them, the ultimate wrestling story.

6. 2019: Cody Rhodes Vs. Chris Jericho

The storyline that defeated NXT in the Wednesday Night War.

Cody Rhodes Vs. Chris Jericho was sensational. The premise was excellent. Cody was the aspiring champion who wanted to move wrestling forward, Jericho the “carny succubus” who wanted to use AEW as a vehicle for himself, caring little about the sanctity of the sporting promise with his gang’s relentless interference.

The plotting was majestic. Folding in parody videos, screaming down the lens babyface promos, arm-breaking angles in the Four Horsemen vein, and wild concessions stand brawls that destroyed WWE’s fake invisible wall, the feud was an extravagantly entertaining means of drawing on the past to underscore that the electricity of pro wrestling should never have been cut off. There was more to the medium than WWE’s endless exchange of scripted promos. Cody Vs. Chris Jericho, you could argue, was actually a disaster - Cody opting out of the World title picture dates terribly with each passing week - but it was a riot at the time.

AEW attempts to do a “war for the soul of AEW” storyline every year. That device needs to be scrapped; they perfected it mere weeks into Dynamite.

5. 2020: Kenny Omega & Hangman Page Vs. The Young Bucks

Not unlike Bret Vs. Owen, Kenny Omega & Hangman Page Vs. the Young Bucks was a story in which every character was right in their own mind. It was actually better than Bret Vs. Owen. Page was clearly the babyface - but the Bucks were a touch more reasonable, and the Elite’s fandom was torn apart as a result. Who was right?

The Bucks were frustrated that Page and Omega had won the Tag Team titles; they believed in Page when nobody else did, and Page, drowning the sorrows of his own perceived failings, had removed himself from the stable (and was hardly dependable when the Inner Circle hunted them down).

Page interpreted this as a lack of belief. He felt the Bucks were patronising him. The one time he did something on his own, the Bucks couldn’t just be happy for him.

Omega, peacemaker, said he was surprised that he’d won the titles ahead of the Bucks, whom he considered the best tag team in the world. This upset Page; stemming from All Out 2019, he felt like he wasn’t Elite - and now Kenny all but declared it a fluke?

And the match at Revolution, goddamn. It was a masterpiece as electrifying in action as it was rich in subtext. Page, showing his babyface heart, used Kenny Omega’s One-Winged Angel. Omega, meanwhile, was more incensed by the Bucks using his old tag finish with Kota Ibushi than anything they’d said, cruelly, to his actual partner.

Of course, this feud led, deftly, to…

4. 2021: Kenny Omega Vs. Hangman Page

This was the programme that evidenced - nay, proved - that AEW was in fact capable of restoring and redefining the art of long-term storytelling.

An immensely rewarding watch for those who paid attention to every granular detail, Kenny Omega was the villain all along. Watch those early tags. Expertly crafted to position Hangman Page as the clutch player, Omega still insisted that theirs was a symbiotic relationship. Omega blamed Page for the loss of the Tag Team titles at All Out 2020 when, in reality, it was Page who scored every last fall in their successful defences. Omega, a gaslighting prick, soon turned and teamed with Don Callis, becoming the Belt Collector: a knowing parody of a main event World champion. Page meanwhile was left to rot, left to confirm his own suspicions that he was not ‘Elite’.

Over the course of 2021 - despite brilliant and shocking last-gasp defeats and through the wholesome power of the Dark Order - Page overcame. It was never too melodramatic, either. The levity of it all - the cowboy-themed entrance at Fight For The Fallen, the daft hijinks on Halloween - was crucial. There was an entertaining lightness to it that prevented Page from descending into a maudlin sad-sack.

Everybody has been told - often by somebody with zero authority - that they aren’t good enough.

Watching Page blow that somebody away, and prove him wrong, at Full Gear ‘21, was one of the most cathartic and electrifying moments in AEW history.

3. 2022: CM Punk Vs. MJF

Another sublime inter-generational tale elevated by the fandom’s experience of the form.

Most felt the same way that MJF did about CM Punk once upon a time. If he didn’t quite save your life, as he had a bullied MJF’s, he saved your love of the sport; AEW fans were moved by the 2011 Pipebomb and how it illuminated just what wrestling could become in a better world.

God, this was incredible. It all started with Punk refusing to shake MJF’s hand - a fairly innocuous act that Punk only committed to bruise MJF’s ego, to tell him that he wasn’t quite ready to step down from the throne of the 21st century’s most preeminent bad guy.

MJF was moved to embark on his wrestling career after seeing a photo of Punk shaking the hand of Daniel Bryan at the 2011 Royal Rumble, and declared his intentions on Facebook (he later showed fans the receipt in possibly the best use ever of social media as a narrative tool.)

MJF interpreted Punk’s behaviour as an unconscionable betrayal.

The plotting here was out-of-this-world great - how the bickering about who was more like Roddy Piper foreshadowed the Dog Collar blow-off, Punk subverting the First Dance fantasy booking by coming out to MJF’s theme in Long Island - and the emotional component verged on the devastating.

Despite an all-time great heat angle, in which MJF, calling back to the original Summer of Punk, revealed that he was a snake, MJF’s story of the bullied young boy who needed wrestling as an outlet proved - ahead of his face turn - that he could be redeemed.

Match quality, emotion, plotting, promo work, stunning twists, forward-thinking character development: this was as good as it gets.

2. 2023: The Bloodline Saga

Bold, funny, epic, objectively a monstrous box office success: the Bloodline saga propelled WWE into a new boom period.

It wasn’t perfect. Half of the misunderstandings that drove the plot could have been resolved, had the characters simply watched the TV show they knew they were in. Every other finish was highly convenient, repetitive and unfair: if the promotion was on the level, the Bloodline should have been barred from ringside several times over. Tribal Combat made a Triple H match feel like a peak Dragon Gate six-man.

Still, this was a veritable star generator of a saga. Roman Reigns banished his stigma as a career failure by becoming one of the top stars in company history. The Bloodline vehicle propelled Cody - eventually - into a stratosphere occupied only by Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, the Rock and John Cena. Sami Zayn - inordinately endearing as the browbeaten figure of sympathy, electrifying as the foul-mouthed bringer of vengeance - finally made it. Jey Uso established himself as a mega-over main event attraction. Tag team wrestling headlined, of all events, WrestleMania.

Even when the matches were methodical and predictable, they were loud and super-dramatic.

For the first time in years and years, WWE was ahead of its audience. Between the Drew McIntyre, Sami Zayn, and first Cody Rhodes matches, WWE risked pissing off the fans, and it was a risk. WWE had little in the way of goodwill when “finishing the story”.

Instead, WWE booked some of the most daring, unpredictable finishes in its history. Eventually, the full trust of the fans was earned. They were in love with the ride.

The “storytelling” company had rediscovered the meaning of drama.

1. 2024: The End Of Sting

Sting in AEW was already perfect. He could have simply retired against anybody alongside Darby Allin in his signature party match and it would have ended perfectly.

It was far better than that.

Ahead of a killer heat angle, the Young Bucks took to wearing pristine white suits. The idea, obviously, was to make the blood of Sting’s family really stand out, to better visualise the awful transgression, but in wearing the suits weeks beforehand, it felt that bit less contrived - the sort of deft detail at which the Bucks excel.

That blood angle was incredible in and of itself, but it took on an intense gravity when Sting, in a career-best promo, revealed that his father had very recently passed away. Sting’s low, solemn words were heartbreaking and terrifying. The Bucks were in deep, deep sh*t.

After the wonderful, impossible nostalgia of Sting descending from the rafters one last time, the retirement itself was a masterpiece. A wild glass-smashing Death match, with Darby taken out until the finish, the very real sense of peril was overwhelming. The match was built perfectly around the idea that even the superhero couldn’t get it done this time - this time, he really needed you to be his hero and get behind him.

A ******¾ storyline, it might have reached the fabled seven stars, had Ric Flair not been involved.