EVERY Wrestling Gimmick Match Ranked From Worst To Best

28. Table

In 2024, this gimmick type is about the only way to do away with the obnoxious, greedy "We want tables!" chant that has infested wrestling. Even when the fans A) know that a hardcore variation will see a table broken at some point and B) are watching a hardcore variation that is infinitely better than a regular table/kendo stick/chair-across-the-back special, they will still demand tables there and then. If a wrestling promoter truly understood supply and demand, every match would be a Table match.

And you know, while it's not as venerated as the Ladder match, the Tables match is almost always a fun exercise in giving the people what they want.

27. Hardcore/No Disqualification/Street Fight/Death

This one covers a lot of ground - so much so that you couldn't begin to rank them all, since in ECW alone virtually every match was held under those rules (or rather, no rules). At its nadir, the match is a completely artless excuse for two lumbering bores to draw a cheap pop. At its apex, the Hardcore match is a hate-fuelled riot. Is there any true difference between a 'Hardcore' match and, for example, an Insert Name Of City Street Fight? Or is the average promoter savvy enough to play with synonyms in order to make each match appear "different"?

Either way, the matches while deeply familiar at this point appeal on a visceral level to the fandom. Art can be crafted, shortcuts can be taken. Monsters can even be starved in a daft but fun B-movie premise that encourages a higher level of aggression. It's a match that can take many forms, not merely in name, and is never not compelling in some sense - but a certain AEW stip has rendered that level of violence quaint.

Death Match purists won't like the conflation here at all, but it's the same thing, only with more gnarly weaponry and gratuitous gore.

26. Lights Out

A fondly-remembered Florida staple, AEW's version of the Unsanctioned match was also once awesome, in that savvy marketing was an effective storyline driver. When Jon Moxley promised a "level of glorious pro wrestling violence fans have not witnessed in this country in decades", he cast a spell so effective that those fans, at AEW Full Gear 2019, readily accepted the more patently "worked" spots deeper into his match against Kenny Omega. The reaction that match generated online was hugely controversial and something of a triumph, given that it was the generally desensitised millennial fanbase that were shocked and appalled. After Adam Cole Vs Orange Cassidy on Dynamite, and two glorified plunder brawls on Rampage, the AEW Lights Out match lost its aura - and has since been replaced by the Texas Death Match as AEW's ultra-violent in-house stip.

25. Unsanctioned

Marketing is just as effective a tool as actual violence. For example, the idea that WWE simply could not condone Triple H Vs. Shawn Michaels, in fear of a real injury occurring, enhanced the drama of the SummerSlam 2002 semi-main considerably. Michaels did an outstanding job of selling his back, and the match would have worked under any 'Hardcore' synonym, but the Unsanctioned stip sold the idea that Shawn had no business being in the ring - which of course drove his babyface comeback to a seminal, unforgettable extent. You can't take the piss with this one, mind. It promises too much. Under-deliver - as Triple H did against Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 33 - and fans will simply reject the glorified No DQ match happening in front of them.

24. Blood & Guts

AEW's Blood & Guts match is flawed, which is a shame, since it often gets the hard part right. The tone of animosity is there, the violence is genuinely transgressive and sickening, and the 2023 entry, through the Elite's layout mastery, arranged its terrifying plunder sequences to make it feel like impulsive, improvised violence (mostly). It's always too much. The cage is never treated as a weapon unto itself. Too many "toys" are used, defeating the purpose of an urgent, animalistic fight to the death; it's too elaborate for its own good. Also, as a TV special, the slowing down during the ad breaks further ruins suspension of disbelief. The finishes have never once felt "final" either, let down by piss-poor prop work, and the mandated WWE-style roof spots, in addition to being lame, kill the idea that there's no escape.

Excellent but flawed is the ceiling.

23. WarGames

WarGames was incredible in the vaunted early years. The 1992 version was seminal - the genius concept embodied through its hateful tone, minimalist primal violence and cinematic spectacle - but that was the peak. WCW killed it by scaling back the brutality, and WWE never booked a perfect reboot. Even the 2017 edition - an excellent match that used the unique layout to frame Killian Dain as a total badass - was baggy. Almost every version thereafter was overlong and over-reliant on contrived plunder spots. The cage, again, has never once felt like the weapon. Usually, a stipulation becomes a cliché over time - but WarGames, with its regulation cage jump spot and West Side Story-style stand-off, ate itself almost immediately. Exciting, but never quite as good as you expect it to be.

22. Survivor Series

Absolutely tremendous with stakes involved, and an over-long annual obligation without, for now, the match does not exist. In this post-Vince era, Triple H has elected to replace it with WarGames - an absolutely unthinkable set of circumstances when one considers why the Survivor Series pay-per-view came to exist in the first place. The original idea was to kill the NWA off, not pay tribute to it. At its best, the titular match was an incredible, layered, star-studded affair useful in both getting babyfaces over and weaving together the various strands of the umbrella programme WWE happened to be telling at the time. At its worst, equipped with the knowledge that the promoter himself deemed it "antiquated", it existed purely to exist or drive the least believable feud in wrestling history: Raw Vs. SmackDown.

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