EVERY Wrestling Gimmick Match Ranked From Worst To Best

51. Gauntlet

Done well at times - the match that crowned a #1 contender for the AEW World Tag Team titles ahead of All Out 2020 was both exquisite use of the rankings system and a genius exercise in making you want to pay for the first sequence between the Young Bucks and FTR - the Gauntlet mostly functions to pad out TV time on Raw. In principle, it's a good means with which to get an underdog babyface over, but in reality, the match is often just a slog. Every criticism aimed at the Iron Man match - that much of it doesn't count - should instead be aimed at this excuse to give the writing team a break.

50. Royal Rumble Variations

It's easy to see why a promoter would attempt to emulate the magic of the Royal Rumble, but Pat Patterson perfected it. There's no improving on the formula of the match, even if the action itself is possibly overdue a 21st century update. The NJPW 'Ranbo' is a cherished Wrestle Kingdom institution, but only because you often see a mad name entering and as a result of the generally loose, shrugging way in which it is worked. It's a bit of fun that works as an exercise in contrast. MLW and Lucha Underground both promoted variations in which the match can be won via pinfall and submission, but both operated as an excuse to do one, because again, why wouldn't you try?

In the '80s, every ageing rock star started pissing about with synthesisers in a bid to stay relevant. They felt they had to. Nonetheless, the odd fun song emerged from this cynical period. This analogy applies almost exactly to the non-WWE Rumbles.

49. Ladder Variations

King Of The Mountain was TNA distilled: an interesting and dumb series of ideas that cancelled one another out towards virtual irrelevance. That stip has not endured. Ultimate X peaked higher and is remembered more fondly, but the scope for embarrassing disaster is so vast that no other promoter has entertained the idea of ripping it off. The AEW Casino Ladder match almost borders on the infuriating, since it only matters when the staggered entrances are done with. Nobody can "win" until that happens, rendering the whole thing a bit farcical. ECW's Full Metal Mayhem was also daft. The idea of a weapon only being allowed in an ECW match after first being retrieved always asked a bit much.

48. Scramble

A flawed latter-day Pat Patterson concept, the idea was to fuse the multi-man match with the Royal Rumble. It didn't work - the staggered entrance layout didn't conjure much in the way of shock and awe, since all...five entrants were announced well in advance. The 'Interim Champion' gimmick was just weird and unflattering, and only underscored how far away certain wrestlers were from deservedly winning such a match. "Interim Champion The Brian Kendrick" was an oxymoron of bad promotion. The core idea wasn't bad at all - five wrestlers going hog wild in an urgent spree of action - but WWE over-thought it. If every wrestler started in the ring at the same time, Pat could have been onto something.

47. Themed Hardcore

Mostly the preserve of WWE, the themed hardcore match ranges from big dumb fun to brutally stupid every which way. None feel like they're really worthy of the violence, but the Viking Rules match, at least, allows Ivar to use his propulsive hoss awesomeness to flatten bodies against a wooden ship. The Good Old-Fashioned Donnybrook match at Extreme Rules 2022 was a fun, chaotic riot of a match, but the Symphony of Destruction stip is a disaster. A tonal mess in which the backdrop is too stupid to take the very real violence seriously, Shinsuke Nakamura once drew blood the hard way when WWE - Jesus H. Christ - failed to gimmick a piano.

AEW's Arcade Anarchy was another fun one-off, and a super-inspired setting for Kris Statlander's first return, but it didn't need to take twice as long as the Bloodline saga to get underway.

46. NJPW King Of Pro Wrestling Matches, Various

As a concept, the wacky 'King Of Pro Wrestling' banner was a failure. This was New Japan basically acknowledging with a shrug, in 2020, that they were desperate for ways of capturing the imagination of the public when the promotion was attacked by the Orthrus that was the pandemic and Gedo's creative decline. Synonymous with the company's wider downfall, the KOPW title - New Japan's equivalent to cinematic matches, almost, in that they were a break from the bittersweet norm - collided against the promotion's sporting framework for the dubious benefit of the odd interesting match-up.

What's ironic is that more than one match contested for the title was excellent - the 2023 Shingo Takagi Vs. Aaron Henare Ultimate Triad bout in particular - but the stigma had long since took root. The title only served to isolate Shingo when, bereft of star power, he should have been plugged into the main event scene.

45. Barbed Wire Ropes

If there isn't an explosion involved, the Barbed Wire match, while painful-looking and suspenseful enough what with the teetering by the ropes and whatnot, often just feels like a lesser-than version of something better - a compromise decided upon by a promoter who doesn't want to incur any damages as a result of blowing up a building. In the case of Sabu Vs. Terry Funk, the risk:ratio balance was completely f*cked: the match wasn't as good as the best prime ECW fare, and Sabu still barely emerged with his bicep intact.

44. Last Chance

Sadly, something as ostensibly climactic and must-see and all-or-nothing rarely works in wrestling, and the medium and its history is largely to blame. It's impossible to take seriously - promoters renege on stips all the time, though Tony Khan should be commended for his attempts to buck that trend. A wrestler being unable to challenge for a title when a specific wrestler remains champion is cheap and very easily undone. When this stip isn't telegraphing the winner outright, it is an albatross. Cody losing a Last Chance match to Chris Jericho at AEW Full Gear 2019 was bold and well-intentioned and added serious heft to his subsequent programme with MJF - but given everything that followed, was it a sensible idea?

The fans didn't take it seriously - AEW followed through, but wrestling itself had cried wolf one too many times - and Full Gear pulled the worst AEW buy amount ever.

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