EVERY Wrestling Gimmick Match Ranked From Worst To Best
21. Last Man Standing
Often great, Last Man Standing for a while became a reliable attraction on the B-level WWE PPV circuit - a well-agented arrangement of powerful plunder spots (after the eye-rolling early 10 counts, anyway). The genre has gifted WWE fans some of its greatest output ever (Becky Lynch Vs. Charlotte Flair, Evolution) and cast John Cena in his best ever role. Often more dramatic than violent, WWE nonetheless has developed quite the knack of building towards one awesome centrepiece moment. Last Man Standing has its irritating quirks, but is mostly an excellent bit of business - provided you can take it as seriously these days in the wake of AEW's improved offering...
20. Parking Lot Fight
Promoted twice by AEW, WWE has done something similar in the past - but nothing on the level of Best Friends Vs. Santana and Ortiz. Their 2020 match was just unbelievable, one of the best plunder brawls ever, because the violence was as seamless as it was thoughtful as it was committed. Yes, the real glass used in windshield spots put it over as a rabid fight to the death, but the arrangement of the thing was sublime. Seamless is used again two sentences later because that really was the word. Nothing was awkwardly set-up. No sequence was so elaborate and so "pro wrestling" that it detracted from the spell of suspended disbelief. Santana jumping from car roof to car roof to land a splash; Santana retrieving a tyre iron from where you'd actually find it; Trent using a tailgate to launch into a tornado DDT: it was a seamless, ultra-believable and mind-melting dose of astonishing pro wrestling violence.
19. Exploding Cage
Atsushi Onita Vs. Hayabusa was one of the best Death matches ever. Hayabusa enhanced what was already an incredible stip with his awesome athleticism, using his expert body control to sprint via Irish-whip into certain incineration, before just stopping short, in excruciating moments of drama throughout Onita's "retirement" match at Kawasaki Stadium in 1995. The actual explosions were terrifying, nuts, far better than the craftily filmed moments during Funk Vs. Onita, and the portion of the match worked through ash, a lung-bursting exchange of survival, was perhaps the greatest visual effect in pro wrestling history: it looked like they were wrestling during an apocalypse.
18. Exploding Barbed Wire Death
Far from artless and gratuitous, the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match is pro wrestling's version of the thriller movie: designed to ratchet up the tension to an unbearable degree, the core idea - and it's more logical than most wrestling matches, in fairness - is to avoid being exploded. Never before has the visual of a wrestler tentatively staggering backwards proved so compelling. In the right hands - the incinerated appendages of Terry Funk and Atsushi Onita - the match fuses demented spectacle with true emotional weight. Explosions are also simply awesome on a primal level impossible to articulate. Bombs in a live action fight: it's the t*ts!
The absolute t*ts!
Bombs and wrestling, at the same time. In some matches, wrestlers have even been German suplexed onto the bastards. Why hasn't the explosion match been revisited more often? AEW have much to answer for.
17. Steel Cage
Cody Rhodes and Wardlow proved that there's still magic in one of the oldest stips yet: an unhinged risk-taking babyface battled a debuting hoss warlord in that magic period of February 2020, and the blood-soaked battle of pure and simple survival was measured to perfection. What WWE has been playing at with the stip for decades is anybody's guess; that the commentators still insist that interference is not possible when it happens every single goddamn time is one of the reasons some fans simply cannot abide the promotion's "creative" ethos. The assault on the intelligence is more vile than anything Vader ever did in the ring. The days of Bruno Sammartino, badass hero, taking pity on his victims and walking out when they'd had enough are long dead - but the gimmick match is still a hit every now and then.
16. Retirement
Wrestling fans will never learn, and even though retirements simply do not happen, the Retirement match is invariably a major attraction. Fans project weight and meaning onto them despite their being a more transparent grift than a failed promoter burying AEW on the podcast racket. Ric Flair was never going to retire - there was more chance of Triple H going through a promo without saying the words "you" and "see" - and yet their WrestleMania XXIV match was utterly gripping. Terry Funk worked multiple successful retirement matches when the plural, by definition, should not have existed. The idea of watching a wrestler go one more time is as must-see as it is utterly implausible. It's a magic stip, in that the biggest lie somehow drives the most intense investment.
15. Set Time Limit
(Most matches have a set time limit, granted, but the following covers bouts that make an explicit, dramatic feature of it.)
Wrestling should explore this more generally - as mentioned, "injury time" can generate palpitations when the stakes are high - and, when a booker is attuned to the dramatic principles of sport, brilliance is often achieved. At his peak, during those seminal G1 Climax tournaments, the last round of block matches benefitted hugely from the set time limit (to a lesser extent, the STARDOM Cinderalla tournament and AEW Continental Classic grasped this device too). The panic of a crowd utterly swept up in the do-or-die meaning of it all; commentators losing their minds and voices at once; the furious exchange of the struggle: done right, it's never more easy to believe in wrestling when the time limit rapidly expires.
The secret to great wrestling isn't cinema or high spots: it's timing and pacing.
CONT'D...