One WWE Match You MUST Watch From Every Year 1984-2024

Sasha Banks and Bayley deserve credit for what they accomplished together for the bulk of WWE's pandemic output throughout 2020, and both their Hell In A Cell SmackDown Women's Championship match and television rematch two weeks later are required viewing for how they managed to physically pay off several months of subtle storytelling set to the frustrating silence of a crowdless year. 

They were the stars of a pathetically poor show.

Meanwhile, AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan most definitely weren't, making it all the more impressive that they were able to have a match of this standard for an at-the-time busted flush of an Intercontinental Championship. Styles unlocked the form that drove him from outsider to outstanding in New Japan Pro Wrestling, while Bryan - at this point dipping his toe in creative with generously mixed results - doing what he always does and taking the case by its merits and applying the pro wrestling that made the most sense.

With no crowd to play to and subsequently no imaginary health bar to refill, the two played hold/counter-hold and worked a tunnel-visioned shootout that sent a clear (and clearly ignored) message to higher-ups; none of this can be the thing it normally is, these are not normal times.

Authentic in a time when almost nothing else was, Bryan was realistically able to tick this off a challenge list he'd probably set himself years earlier. Meanwhile, with this and the Boneyard Match on his CV, 'The Phenomenal One' can oddly claim a wretched era as one of his most critically fruitful.