Every WWE Five Star Match Ranked From Worst To Best

This may read as insulting, from the perspective of an unfit writer sat in a chair - but it seems, from the outside, easier than ever before to structure an excellent, main event-level match in 2018. Research access to countless hours of genius is instant in this digital age. Finishers are no longer sacred, creating shortcuts to the pop. The international standard of athleticism allows for unprecedented levels of durability and contortion; this in turn enables the sort of breathless reversal-stuffed climactic sequences precision-calibrated to send fans into delirium. Wrestling's inherent oneupmanship in turn compels this stupendously gifted set of modern practitioners to constantly evolve past even 2017's unreal standard.

Altogether more difficult is engineering feeling from a fanbase spoiled for and often emotionally detached from wrestling.

This was a glorious fusion of those two concepts.

Gargano's liberal kick-outs never once felt like the work of a man fishing for the cheap pop; throughout the half-hour duration, he inspired hope beyond hope with his last-gasp lifts of the shoulder, controlled into positions of vulnerability by Andrade's own fusion of viciousness and varnish. The convoluted action never felt contrived. This was, simply, a beautiful war never once as oxymoronic as that description. Gargano's achievement - awesome and authentic and catatonic babyface work so effective that he out-duelled duelling chant - was thought the pinnacle of wrestling in 2018.

Until...