EVERY Wrestling Gimmick Match Ranked From Worst To Best

59. Cinematic

A way for Tony Khan and Vince McMahon to promote something during the pandemic that wasn't bittersweet empty arena wrestling - or, alternatively, a way for Matt Hardy to not have to move - the Cinematic match was always a compromise. The original Stadium Stampede was fantastic - a spectacle, somehow, a very funny and moving story that was also deliriously inventive and at times incredibly violent - Khan grasped the "match" part of "cinematic match". Hangman Page in particular went absolutely apesh*t in that bar scene. WWE meanwhile never got the "match" bit, though the Bray Wyatt Vs. John Cena Firefly Fun House match was as bold and artful as anything the promotion has ever booked - a surreal journey into the flawed psyche of its PG babyface. Everything else they did in the parameters of the form was truly diabolical.

58. Lesser Steel Cage Variations

Remember when JBL and the Big Show worked a Barbed Wire Cage match? With barely any flesh-ripping gore? A terrible match on a terrible show - No Way Out 2005 - WWE seemed to promote it knowing full well that even a regular Steel Cage match couldn't polish that turd. Instead, the more lurid-sounding stip was tacked onto it in a very transparent bid to put a couple of interesting words together (where two interesting wrestlers had not been paired together). Again, the cage (while bastardised by WWE) is perfect as is when done well. Virtually every attempt to tweak it is mostly convoluted and driven by desperation on the part of a promoter who, unable to get the basics right, mistakenly believes that over-gimmicking is the way to go (Dixieland). That, or the cage is a penis extension for Hulk Hogan (Doomsday). As you'll discover, one promoter, inspired by the Last Battle of Atlanta, actually did improve upon the traditional cage match.

57. First Blood / Sadistic Madness

The First Blood match is a bit of a risk, one that lends it a certain anxious vibe removed from the intended drama: what if a wrestlers draws blood the hard way? It has to "count' - the commentators can hardly explain that only predetermined cuts to the forehead are allowed - so the match already risks being incredibly stupid. WCW promoted the dumbest one ever, at Uncensored '99, when Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair just started blading because, like the scorpion feasting on the frog, they were such inveterate carnies desperate for a reaction that they didn't know any better. You should be baying for blood - not hoping that it doesn't leak out.

The First Blood match is the sort of thing that sounds incredibly cool in the mind of a 14 year-old - like Spineshank, or Vince Russo.

56. Handicap

Mostly used as a TV device - babyfaces must face a series of obstacles to earn their big redemptive moment - the handicap match by design isn't a great, climactic affair worth paying hard-earned money for. It is also - by design - a one-dimensional match with minimal scope with which the babyface can do anything interesting, since it only makes sense for them to sell and sell and sell before the comeback. All that said, a great wrestler can elevate anything they are tasked with. During his early ascension in AEW, Darby Allin tagging himself in against Le Sex Gods was a memorable bit of defiant, badass body language that further got him over as a potential babyface superstar.

55. Casino Battle Royale

A more famous variation of the Rumble than most of the imitators, the Casino Battle Royale warrants its own entry accordingly - but it's more of the same copy. The match can't rip off the Rumble beat-for-beat, and since there is no improving on perfection, what's left is an overthought and unnecessary update. It's a very Tony Khan match; just as he can somehow concentrate on at least three high-level occupations, he is the only person with the ability to track the four wrestlers enter at once gimmick. Everybody else watches on as the unfocused device plays out and no one wrestler really gets the pop and shine of entering the field. Marred by a gambling motif for the sake of it, the Casino Battle Royale never once worked. MJF was very funny in the first one, mind.

54. Punjabi Prison

A bespoke vehicle for the Great Khali was never going to be any good, but making the poor bloke climb two separate walls felt more like a rib than anything. On one level, the stip was a catastrophically stupid idea - it was dogless Kennel From Hell match, for all intents and purposes, and the one and only version of that was infamously awful - but on another level, sorry, the structure looked awesome in a silly B-movie way and the Undertaker using a rope to hit the Big Show with a dropkick kicked ass. Both bad and so-bad-it's-good. Mostly bad.

53. Three Stages Of Hell

Two or even three gimmick matches for the price of one, Three Stages of Hell is that rarest of things: a Vince Russo-pilled exercise in excess that can actually be great. Steve Austin and Triple H proved as much at No Way Out 2001, but elsewhere, it's probably more accurate to describe that specific match as a rule-proving exception to the fact that the gimmick is bad. Nobody else did anywhere near as good a job with it. Triple H and Shawn Michaels went very masturbatory at Armageddon 2002, and the NXT backlash began when Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano scrambled all too desperately for critical acclaim in a match, at TakeOver: Toronto 2019, that was way, way too much.

52. Inferno

It's impossible to do much beyond basic sequences of power moves - you can't make the flames dance with a technical chess battle on the mat, and you'd be fool to attempt a springboard with fire mere inches away from the ropes - but if a gimmick match is strong enough to make a match between the Undertaker and Kane halfway compelling to watch, it can't be all bad. WWE's version was an excuse to make fans react in much the same way as children do at a fireworks display; in Puerto Rico and FMW, the match was once so barbaric and dangerous that you'll never see its like ever again. You have not lived until you've seen Atsushi Onita escape what he sells as near-certain death, as the ring practically melts underneath the heat, only for the Sheik to throw a fireball in his face.

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